


walk inland

by ScribeofArda



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, And she's gonna put it to good use if nobody else will, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Content warnings for Booker's mental state, Depressed Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Fluff, Forgiveness ain't easy but they're trying, Hurt/Comfort, Joe takes it about as well as you would expect, M/M, Nicky gets captured, Nicky is the one who gets tortured but there's enough angst to go round for everyone, Nile has the only brain cell in this entire group, Or more accurately: partial reconciliation, Post-Canon Fix-It, Recognising that Booker is hurting, Recovery, Whilst not excusing the consequences of his actions, by the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:08:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 34,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27270952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScribeofArda/pseuds/ScribeofArda
Summary: Booker’s gaze is hollow, but he stares steadily back at Joe. “You have no idea,” he says again. “You said you would walk through fire for Nicky? I would have done that a thousand times for my children, before I ever knew that I would survive it.” He takes a step closer, and Joe instinctively readies himself at the look in his eyes.“Imagine,” Booker says, his voice low. “Just for a moment, that Nicky is dying.”Joe punches him right in the face.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 183
Kudos: 859





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've made it back! Sorry I promised a story in a few weeks after row me to shore and have only just made it, things happened in real life that significantly slowed down writing for a while. Also, this story got way longer than I anticipated it being (which happens with every single story I write, I really should expect it by now).
> 
> This story deals with the aftermath of torture, but begins from the moment that the character is found and follows from there, so there are no scenes of actual torture, in real time or in flashbacks, and no graphic descriptions by any character. General content warnings for canon-typical violence and medical 'procedures', discussion of Booker's mental state (hella depressed) and mentions of contemplating suicide. I have split this story up into several chapters to put chapter-specific warnings at the beginning of each, but all chapters will go up at the same time because fuck a publishing schedule.
> 
> It's not as angsty as the above warnings may make it sound. This is a story about recovery and finding some sort of peace. It will end happily, and there will be fun moments in amongst emotional ones.
> 
> A quick note about how Booker's actions are approached as well, because this is maybe a contentious topic in the fandom in some places. Booker is depressed and was actively seeking a way to kill himself, but in doing so betrayed the people he considered family, who have a right to be angry about what he did. If you hate Booker and think he doesn't deserve any form of redemption/forgiveness, but also if you think he did nothing wrong and all his actions are excused because of the mental state he was in, then maybe this isn't the story for you. In writing this, I have tried to treat the characters and their stories with the nuance that they deserve.
> 
> I've had to take down the previous version of this story and re-upload because it wasn't showing up properly, so apologies if you saw an earlier version a couple hours ago.
> 
>  **Chapter content warnings:** allusions to torture methods, canon-typical violence, altered mental state due to drugs (temporarily), mentions of throwing up, discussion of Booker's betrayal and his obviously-not-great mental state that led to those decisions, discussion of grief and losing children/loved ones.

There is someone in his flat.

Booker sees red out of the corner of his eye, the bright red of a coat, as he stumbles into the flat. He turns towards it, hand instinctively going for the gun at the small of his back. He staggers to a stop in the doorway, freezing in place.

Nile looks back at him from where she is leant up against the kitchen counter. “This place is disgusting, and you look a mess.”

Booker slowly lets his hand fall back to his side, and leans up against the doorframe. “I may be drunk most of the time, but even so, I’m pretty sure I haven’t missed a hundred years going past.”

Nile crosses her arm, the bright red of her puffa jacket crinkling at the movement. “No shit,” she says. “I’m here for something else.”

Booker takes a good look at her. It’s only been about a year since he said goodbye to her, to them all, on the banks of the Thames, but Nile already looks different. She’s holding herself differently, the weight of the knowledge of what they are held so steadily on her shoulders. “You look good,” he finds himself saying.

Nile snorts. “You don’t.”

Booker shrugs, and steps into the kitchen to put the mostly empty bottle down on the rickety little table there. He already knew that. “Why are you here?” he asks. “Shouldn’t you be off with the others, flinging yourself out of planes without parachutes and learning how to fly helicopters? Enjoying your new life?”

Nile straightens up from where she is leant against the counter. “Pack anything you can’t leave behind,” she says. “You’re coming with me.”

Booker snorts. “Sure. Back into the fold? Tempers cooled off and you’ve been sent to find the wayward sheep and herd it back to the flock? I think I’ll pass. It’s only been a year, and god knows Nicky can hold a grudge when he wants to.”

At the mention of Nicky, something in Nile’s frame shudders and falls flat. Booker pauses. “Do they even know you’re here?” he asks.

Nile tilts her chin up in an obvious show of bravado. “Better to ask forgiveness than permission. And you’re needed.”

“I notice that you don’t say I’m wanted.” Booker turns and looks across the table. He was sure he had left an unopened bottle of brandy here yesterday. Or possibly last week. “I can maybe see Andy giving you a pass on this one, but Joe certainly won’t. I bet he’s itching to put a few bullet holes in me the next time he sees me.”

Another flash of something across Nile’s expression at the mention of Joe. “Joe will cope with it,” she says, something strange echoing in her voice. “We need to go. Get your things. There’s a car downstairs. I’ll explain everything on the way.”

“And Nicky?” Booker shakes his head. “You’ve got to watch out for the quiet ones, Nile, they’re always deadly when provoked.”

Nile’s expression shutters. “Nicky is why I’m here, Booker,” she says, her voice suddenly softer. “They’ve taken him.”

The floor falls out from underneath Booker’s feet. “What?” he croaks.

“About five months ago. We think it’s someone connected to Merrick, someone who knows our secret. They stormed the hotel we were in. I was-” For the first time, Booker sees that bravado break, and fear and regret creep through from underneath. “I was trying to keep Andy safe,” Nile says, her voice shaking. “They…they had grenades. Andy was knocked out by the blast. Joe and I were in pieces. By the time we all woke up, Nicky was gone.”

“Gone?” Booker echoes. He sways where he stands, and blindly grabs the back of the chair in front of him. “And you-”

“We’ve been searching for him,” Nile says. “Joe can barely stop long enough to eat or sleep. But every time we get close, they move him again, or the trail goes cold. We’ve been at this for months, Booker. We need all the help we can get.”

“Copley can-”

Nile is already shaking her head. “We reached out to him a month in. Still not enough.”

“So I’m your last resort?” It falls flat, the bite missing entirely. Booker can’t get over the notion that Joe and Nicky are apart. The idea of Nicky locked away somewhere, and his mind immediately skips to everything that he saw in the brief time he was in those labs, the medical equipment laid out in neat lines that wouldn’t look out of place in a torture chamber.

“You’re my next available resource,” Nile counters. “And you’re a part of this. At the very least, you deserved to know.” Booker flinches at that, and she sees it. Of course she sees it. “Booker,” she says. “We need your help. And quite frankly, you owe them.”

He owes them more than he could ever repay, even if he lived for a thousand years. And it’s that thought that gets him moving, gets him to grab the duffel bed he keeps under his bed and the weapons stashed around the flat. “Where are they?” he asks.

“Andy is with Copley in England,” Nile says. “Joe is…I think he is flying back in from Poland tonight. Or tomorrow. It’s been a bit hard to keep track of him.”

“He’s apart from Nicky,” Booker says as he holsters a handgun and flips through his most reliable passport. “I’m surprised he hasn’t shot Copley yet.”

“It’s come close,” Nile answers. She heads for the door. “We have tickets for a flight in two hours out of here, so we better get moving.”

Booker arches a brow as he pulls the front door shut behind him. He doesn’t bother locking it. Everything important is in his duffel bag or stashed somewhere else. There’s nothing in that flat except food and alcohol, both of which anyone else is welcome to. “So sure I would come that you’ve already bought the tickets?” he asks.

Nile gives him a strange look over her shoulder. “You weren’t going to stay away,” she says, and she sounds so sure of it. “Not when you heard that Nicky is gone. Even you aren’t enough of a bastard to stay away.”

Booker isn’t so sure. But he follows her down the stairs anyway, with each step feeling like it’s bringing him a little closer to damnation.

0-o-0-o-0

Nile keeps Joe from killing Booker, but it’s a damn close thing.

He’s furious, and then he isn’t. Nile watches as it all drains out of him. There’s no space for it, no space for anything but the fear and terror that has been gripping him for months, ever since Nicky was taken. She can see the exhaustion in his frame, the way it clings to him even as he keeps moving, unable to stop for even a moment.

He hasn’t forgotten what Booker did. Nile thinks he’s just too tired to care.

It’s another thing to worry about, keeping Joe from Booker’s throat, but somehow they manage it. Joe can barely stay at whatever their current safehouse is long enough to debrief and gather new information and then he goes again, tracking another lead, following another trail until it too turns cold and dries up. Sometimes, they go with him. Sometimes, Andy keeps the rest of them back, running down more promising leads that also dry up and vanish into thin air.

Booker keeps his distance as best as he can, and Joe doesn’t put a bullet through him. Nile thinks it’s the best she can do under the circumstances.

She misses Nicky. She’d only known him for a few months before everything, but it was enough to come to appreciate the quiet aura of calm around him, especially when Joe and Andy were egging each other on in another ridiculous dare. She misses the way he’d seemed to know exactly what to say to her, every time she felt the weight of this new life dig into her shoulders and make her stumble.

If she misses him, after only a few months, she doesn’t think she can imagine what Joe is feeling right now.

They chase Nicky and his captors for two months. Two months of getting there too late, of arriving only to find empty rooms and discarded medical equipment, still stained with blood. Two months of Joe putting his fist through the nearest wall and watching the skin close back over, of Andy obsessing over files and reports late into the night with deep bruises under her eyes, of Booker looking ridden with guilt at every turn and still there, still following them.

Nicky’s captors make a mistake.

Perhaps Nicky did something. Perhaps they got lazy. Perhaps they were just human, and incompetent at the right moment, and someone made a careless error. But it’s enough. It has to be enough.

Nile wades through the facility, rifle held securely at her shoulder as she covers Andy. Joe ploughs on ahead, and nobody tries to stop him when every shot is a kill shot.

There is a door up ahead. It is heavily guarded.

Nile doesn’t let herself look away. Within moments, the hallway is cleared.

They finally find the right keycard, and Nile slams it against the panel on the wall. The light on the door turns green, and there is a click that echoes through the bloodstained hallway. The door swings open at Andy’s touch.

Someone gasps, and Nile realises that it was her. Next to her, Joe makes a sound like he’s been punched, and sways where he stands, hand clutching at the doorframe.

She had been expecting a lab. A room like where she had found them all in Merrick’s building, clinical and sterile and so bare of anything human that it somehow hurts. She had expected to find him strapped down again. Held down on a gurney or maybe a table, electrodes on his chest and monitors behind him, like before. Samples neatly organised on a tray beside him, medical equipment lined up ready to be used. She hadn’t expected _this_.

She hadn’t expected bare walls and a floor that should be white but isn’t, still slick with water in the corners where a hose is tangled. Or the tables set to one side, piled with equipment that she doesn’t recognise. Her foot brushes up against something as the door opens, and she looks down to see a syringe roll across the floor, down the slight slope towards the drain set in the middle of the room, that looks rusted but she knows isn’t.

Nicky looks up as the door swings open. The faintest of smiles flickers over his lips, and he leans his head against his arm. Even that slight movement makes him swing, the chains above his hands clinking as his toes brush across the floor. “Oh,” he rasps. “Hello.”

Joe makes a wounded noise. “ _Nicolo_.”

He rushes forwards. Nicky swings again with the force of Joe colliding with him, until Joe’s arms wrap around him and hold him steady. “Nicolo,” Joe says again, hands coming up to cup his face. “Nicolo, my love.”

Nicky doesn’t say anything. He shuts his eyes and leans his head into the touch.

Andy moves into the room, and Nile startles. She’d almost forgotten that her and Booker were here as well, taking in this room with poorly concealed horror. “Get him down,” Andy says, and her voice is loud enough that Nicky flinches at the sound. She rushes forwards and wraps an arm around Nicky’s waist, heaving him up and trying to take some of the strain off his arms. Nile can already see that both of his shoulders are dislocated, unable to heal with the constant weight of his own body pulling him down.

Joe is talking frantically to Nicky is a mix of Italian and Arabic that is slurring together with how quickly he’s speaking, grasping Nicky’s face. Nicky’s eyes are still shut. “Quickly!” Andy snaps. “Get him down.”

The cuffs around Nicky’s wrists have cut into his skin, a never-ending trickle of blood winding its way down his arms as the skin is broken and heals and breaks again. The chain between them is welded to the beam stretching across the ceiling. “Keys,” Nile says, her voice hoarse. “We need keys.”

“On it,” Booker gets out, sounding just as wrecked as Nile feels. He moves into the room and across to the table in the corner, pushing piles of paper off to fall to the floor as he searches. He looks up at Nicky every few seconds, and the expression on his face is something Nile doesn’t ever want to feel herself.

Nile leans back out of the door and checks the hallway. Nothing but the bodies she already knew were there, flashing warning lights from further on that nobody is alive to answer to. They’re as secure as they can be, for now.

“Nicky,” Joe says again, tapping the side of his face. “Nicolo, beloved, open your eyes. Look at me. Please?”

Nicky’s eyes flutter open. “Hello, _habibi_ ,” he murmurs, his voice rasping in his throat. “Are you okay?”

Joe chokes on his next breath. “We’re all fine,” Andy says, filling the silence. “We’ve been looking for you, you idiot.”

Nicky nods. “I know,” he says simply. “Of course you are.” His eyes fall shut again, and Nile sees the shudder that runs through him.

“Where are the fucking keys!” Joe snaps, wrapping one arm around Nicky’s waist to try and take some of his weight with Andy.

“I’m looking!” Booker shouts back. “There’s- fuck, Joe, don’t come over here. Stay with Nicky. Don’t look at all of this.”

Nile looks over at the desk. At the spread of pictures that have fallen out from a file in Booker’s hands. She’s too far away to make out the details, but bile rises in her throat anyway.

“We’re going to get you out,” Joe says to Nicky, pressing his forehead against Nicky’s. Nicky barely moves. Nile can only just see his chest rising and falling with each breath, and he looks so thin, hanging there in the harsh white lights, dried blood flaking off his torso with every movement. “We’ve just got to find the keys, and then we’ll get you down and we’ll get out of here. I’m here now, my love. We’re here.”

Nicky nods. His eyes flicker open again, and he looks away from Joe towards Andy. “Joe is coming for me, boss,” he says calmly.

Something sinks deep into the pit of Nile’s stomach.

“I’m here,” Joe says, confusion tempering his voice. “We’ve come for you, Nicolo. We’re here.”

Nicky doesn’t look away from Andy. “I know he is coming,” he says again, and the calm confidence in his voice makes Nile’s heart join her stomach in trying to disappear through the bloodstained floor. “He’ll be here, boss. Just wait and see.”

“He’s right here,” Andy says slowly, a furrow appearing in her brow as Joe presses a hand to Nicky’s chest and Nicky barely responds. “Look, Nicky, he’s right here.”

“I know,” Nicky says. His eyes slip shut again. “He’s coming for me. You’ll see.”

“Nicolo,” Joe gets out. His hands run over Nicky’s chest, up to cup his face, brushing across his skin over and over again. “Nicolo, I’m right here. I’ve come for you. We’re here for you, my love. We’re here.”

Nicky doesn’t respond. The rise and fall of his chest and the slow sounds of measured breathing fills the silence of the room.

Even Booker has stopped now, staring over his shoulder at Nicky. “What the fuck is going on?” he whispers, trading a look with Nile. Nile just shakes her head, her eyes wide.

“Where are the _fucking keys_?” Joe snaps over his shoulder, his voice shaking. He’s still clutching at Nicky, hands unable to stay still. Nicky sways slightly with the movement, and Andy tightens her grip on him. Booker wordlessly turns back to the desk, yanking open drawers and spilling their contents out onto the floor.

“Nicolo,” Joe says again as he turns back to Nicky, his voice catching and breaking. “Nicolo, what’s wrong? What is it?”

Nicky opens his eyes, and then his brow creases in a slow frown. “You shouldn’t be crying,” he says. “You don’t cry.”

“What- what are you talking about?” Joe gets out. “Nicolo?”

“You don’t cry,” Nicky says simply. In the background, Booker curses at something, but Nile can’t look away from the calm expression on Nicky’s face. The tremble in Joe’s hand as he presses it to Nicky’s chest, uncaring of the dried blood smeared across him. “Not here. Not in this room.”

“Nicky, what are you talking about?” Andy says, her voice low. Nicky gives her a small smile, but doesn’t respond, and Andy jostles him. “Nicky!”

“It’s okay,” Nicky says, looking at Andy. “Joe is coming for me. He’ll be here.”

“I don’t understand,” Joe says, choking on the words. “Nicolo, I don’t understand. I’m right here, my love. I’m right here.”

“Nicky,” Nile says slowly, moving further into the room. Nicky’s gaze drifts away from Andy, and he smiles slightly at her. Nile can’t bring herself to return it. “Where do you think we are?” she asks gently.

Nicky’s expression shutters. Nile suppresses the urge to take a step back as she is abruptly reminded that the man in front of her, who laughs over forgotten bread in the oven that has burned and turned black, who watches crap reality tv with her and keeps Joe from changing over to the football, who woke her in the middle of the night when she dreamt of water and iron again and made them both tea, is a millennia old and has killed more people than he can even remember. “Do not try and trick me,” he says, and his voice is cold. His gaze turns away from her, looking out towards the open door. “You know that it will not work.”

“Nicky,” Nile says again. She steps forwards, and Nicky’s gaze snaps straight to her. “Where do you think we are?” she asks again.

Nicky snarls at her, bucking forwards and swinging against the chains. “Stop it!” he snaps, his eyes flitting wildly around the room as Andy restrains him and tries to take his weight again. There is sweat beading across her forehead at the strain of holding him up, the chains above Nicky’s head creaking with every movement. “I won’t fall for it!”

“Okay, okay,” Nile says quickly, holding her hands up. “No questions, that’s okay. It’s okay, Nicky.”

Nicky sags in Andy’s grip. Joe’s breath hitches, and he cups Nicky’s face in his hands again. “Nicolo,” he pleads. “We’re here. Please, Nicolo. We’ve come for you.” Nicky barely looks at him, and a sob slips through Joe’s lips as he presses his forehead to Nicky’s. “Beloved,” he whispers. “Please. Come back to me.”

“Found them!” Booker holds up a set of keys as he rushes over. “Got them, I got them. Hold him steady and get ready to catch him.”

Nicky looks at Booker, a slight furrow appearing on his brow. “Why are you here?”

Nile can see Booker’s face just fall. He nearly drops the keys, his hands shaking as he pulls one out of the ring and stands up on tiptoes to try and reach the handcuffs. “I know you don’t want to see me,” he gets out in a rush as he tries to fit a key into the cuffs, only for it to jam in place and not turn. “I know I fucked up, Nicky, I know. But I couldn’t not come when they asked.”

Nicky is staring at Booker, fully frowning now. “You’re not usually here,” he says. “You don’t usually come.”

Booker tries another key, and Nicky winces instinctively as the cuffs dig into his wrists and fresh blood trickles down his forearms. “Sorry, I’m sorry,” Booker says, his voice hoarse. His hands tremble around the key as it also jams in the lock. “Fuck, Nicky, I’m so sorry. I never meant for this to happen.”

Nicky laughs.

Something cold slithers down Nile’s back and into the pit of her stomach. She can see the same thing reflected on Andy’s face as she holds Nicky up, on Joe’s as tears drop steadily from his cheeks and stain his shirt. Joe’s hands tremble where they rest on Nicky’s chest.

Nicky leans his head against his arm and watches Booker as his laughter slowly peters out. “They must have changed it up,” he says. “Or something else has gone wrong. I never thought I would imagine Booker apologising to me.”

Booker’s hands pause on the cuffs. He looks back over his shoulder at Nile. “Imagine?” he asks quietly.

Something clicks into place, and Nile remembers the discarded syringe she had kicked away in the doorway, the stacks of equipment scattered around the room. “Drugs still work on us, right?” she says, turning to Andy. “We can still be affected?”

Andy nods as Joe turns to look at her. “What?” he asks, his voice hoarse. “What is it?”

“Nicky.” Nile turns back to Nicky, and waits until he looks up at her. “Do you think that we aren’t really here?”

Nicky huffs a laugh. “Of course you aren’t really here,” he says, his voice mild. “I know you’re just in my head. But that’s fine. Joe’s coming for me. You’ll see.” His eyes slip shut again, a small smile curling his lips. “You’ll see. He’ll be here.”

“Nicolo.” Joe utter his name like a prayer, desperately pulling him close and taking his weight as Booker struggles with another key. “No, no, no. Nicolo, my love, my beloved. I’m right here. Please, please believe me, my heart. I’m here. I came for you.” He presses a kiss to Nicky’s forehead, a sob slipping out through his lips. “Please,” he murmurs against Nicky’s skin. “This is real. I’m here.”

“Got it!” Booker says abruptly. One of the handcuffs springs open, and Nicky cries out as his arm falls down to his side. There’s a sickening pop as his shoulder joint slots back into place, and then Booker has gotten the other handcuff undone and Nicky crumples to the floor. Joe and Andy catch him but can’t quite hold him up, and they all end up sliding down to the floor in a heap. Nicky is gasping in pain, and Joe wraps his arms around him, holding on so tight that his knuckles are white.

“This is real,” he says, pressing kisses to Nicky’s face, the hollow of his throat, wherever he can reach. “Can you feel my heart beating in my chest? Can you feel the tears on my cheeks, hear my voice? It is real, all of it. Would I ever lie to you?”

They get him up to his feet, hanging between Joe and Andy. Nicky’s head drops to his chest, his breathing harsh. “We need to get moving,” Andy says. “Booker, grab all the notes that you can find. Nile, cover us.”

Booker moves behind them towards the desk and the filing cabinets. Nile steps back into the doorway, raising her rifle up to her shoulder and scanning the hallway for threats.

As such, she’s too late but do anything to turn and stare as Nicky suddenly plants his feet, drives one elbow into Andy’s stomach and up into her throat, and then shoves Joe away from him, making a dash for the door. “Nile!” Joe shouts, catching himself against the wall and pushing forwards, too late to grab him. Andy is staggering back, gasping for breath and wheezing horribly.

Nile drops her rifle. Nicky barrels towards her, eyes fixed on the open hallway behind her, and she braces herself.

He swings at her. Nile dodges, but even then the blow still glances off her temple and sends ringing through her head. She ignores it, grabbing hold of him as he tries to slip past. Nicky bucks in her grip as she wraps her arms around him, trying to pin his arms to his side and snarling at her wordlessly. He throws her head back and it connects with a sickening crunch as her nose breaks and blood starts gushing down her chin, but she holds on. “Nicky!” she shouts, spitting blood everywhere. “It’s real, Nicky, it’s- motherfucker, will you stop it! We’re here, we’re really here!”

Nicky gets one arm free and reaches behind, clawing at Nile’s face in desperation. Nile tightens her grip, squeezing her eyes shut and pressing her face into the back of his neck, inside his reach. “You little _shit_ ,” she gets out as she tries to get him in a hold and he sinks his teeth into the meat of her hand. “Oh, you motherfucker! This is fucking real!”

Nicky is all sharp edges under her arms, and even after only a few seconds of struggling she can feel exhaustion beginning to creep in. He sags in her grip, just a little, and she uses the change in weight to stamp his knee out from behind. They collapse together in a heap on the floor, Nile keeping hold of him even as Nicky twists and struggles in her grip.

He’s nearly managed to work his way free when Joe is there, down on his knees in front of them and grabbing Nicky’s hands. “Come back to me, Nicolo,” he says, tears spilling out down his cheeks. “Come back to us.”

Nicky stills. “It isn’t real,” he rasps, eyes flickering wildly between Joe and Andy, who is staggering over. He twists in Nile’s grip, and Nile can feel the stuttering of each breath he takes, the rise and fall of his ribs underneath her hands. She loosens her grip, propping him up now instead of holding him down, and Nicky doesn’t immediately try to run, which is either a good or bad sign depending on whether he’s starting to believe them or he’s just too exhausted to make another effort.

“It isn’t real,” Nicky says again. “You’re just- this is just a trick. I won’t fall for it again. I know what you’re doing, I know what you’re trying to do, and I will not fall for it.”

Joe looks like he is hanging on by a fucking thread. He drops his head, pressing it to the back of Nicky’s hands still in his grasp. “ _Please_ ,” he says, his voice muffled against Nicky’s skin. “Please, Nicolo. I don’t know what to do.”

Nicky is shaking under Nile’s hands. “You trust him,” Nile says, gripping his shoulders as Joe cups his face in his hands, pressing kisses across his skin amidst murmured pleas. “You trust us. Just trust us, Nicky. Don’t think about anything else. It’s just us. It’s just Joe.”

Nicky shakes his head, but Nile can see him staring at Joe, unable to look away.

Booker kneels down next to them. “I am so, _so_ sorry, Nicky,” he says, taking one of Nicky’s hands in his. “For my part in all of this. For doing this to us. I will beg for centuries for your forgiveness, on my hands and knees if you would like.” The barest hint of a smile curls his lips. “I don’t think you could ever hallucinate me doing that, Nicky.”

Andy grasps Nicky’s other hand, pressing his fingers to a scar across the inside of her wrist. “I burnt myself, dropping a hot pan on my wrist, two months ago,” she says, her voice rasping. “Look, the scar is a perfect square. You haven’t seen that before. You can’t imagine that.”

“I deleted all the contacts on my phone,” Nile blurts out. Nicky twists to look up at her, his gaze shadowed, his entire body now trembling. He looks scared. He looks so fucking terrified that Nile struggles to find the next words. “I deleted all my family’s numbers, and the photos, and everything,” she manages to get out. “I did it a few months ago, whilst we were searching for you. There’s no way you could imagine that. There’s no fucking way a hallucination of me would tell you that.”

Nicky doesn’t say anything. Nile isn’t sure that he even can. “Let’s go,” Nile says quietly. “Come on, Joe, let’s go.”

Joe and Andy get Nicky up between them. Nicky is shaking now, full body shudders that send him stumbling over his own feet. He can barely hold himself up.

“I’ve got you,” Joe is saying as Booker grabs every piece of paper he can see and shoves it into a bin bag he’d found somewhere, as Nile steps out of the doorway, rifle held securely at her shoulder. There are still tears rolling down Joe’s cheeks as Nicky’s head lolls forwards and he says nothing in reply, but he just keeps one arm wrapped tight around Nicky’s waist and manoeuvres with Andy down the hallway. “I’ve got you, Nicolo,” he says again, over and over. “We’re here. We’ve got you.”

Copley is waiting in a jeep outside, the engine already running. “Jesus,” he mutters when they appear, Nile sweeping her rifle out across the road as Andy and Joe hustle Nicky towards the car, Booker bringing up the rear. Joe gets in first, pulling Nicky in with him, with Andy getting in last. Booker jumps in the boot with the files, picking up a rifle and positioning himself to watch out of the back window, and Nile gets in the front.

“Drive,” she says tersely.

Copley glances behind him, at Joe as he wraps Nicky up in his arms and holds him close, murmuring something into his hair too quiet to make out. At Nicky himself, his bloodstained torso and ripped trousers, the way his body shakes and his eyes dart around the car. At Andy’s tense stature, Booker behind them with an expression Nile still doesn’t think she ever wants to know. He puts the car into gear and pulls away without a word.

Nile keeps one eye on the road ahead and one on the back seats of the car as Copley drives, weaving through back streets as they head out of the city. Andy has one hand on Nicky’s leg, gripping it tight enough that Nicky can surely feel it. Joe has pulled his jacket off and tucked it around Nicky as best as he can whilst still keeping hold of him, and Nile can still hear him murmuring to Nicky, his cheek resting against the top of Nicky’s head.

“What happened?” Copley murmurs to Nile as they pull to a stop at a traffic light. Nile glances behind her to see Booker duck down under a blanket in the back. It would not be a good end to the day if they got stopped by local police for having a man with a rifle in their trunk.

“He’s been drugged,” Nile replies, checking the wing mirror. She’s fairly sure that they aren’t being tailed. “Pretty sure he’s been starved, how thin he is, and is sleep deprived as well.” She glances behind her again. Nicky’s eyes are shut, his head tucked into Joe’s neck, but he’s obviously still awake. A muscle is jumping in his jaw where it’s clenched against the tremors running through him, and his hands are gripping Joe’s jacket so hard that his knuckles are white.

“He thought we were hallucinations,” Nile says quietly. “He was convinced that we weren’t really there. Kept telling Andy that Joe was coming for him.”

“I can’t imagine Joe took that well,” Copley murmurs. He glances up in the rearview mirror. “Does he believe us now?”

Nile doesn’t have a clue what is going on in Nicky’s head. She just shrugs, and then twists in her seat to look into the back, the seatbelt digging into her neck. “Nicky?” she asks quietly. “How are you doing?”

Nicky looks up at her from where his head is resting on Joe’s shoulder, his eyes shadowed. His face is even paler than it was before. “I’m- I’m not going to fall for it,” he mutters, but Nile can hear the uncertainty threaded through his voice. “Joe is coming for me. My family is coming for me. I won’t-”

His voice cuts off abruptly, and his face, if possible, gets even paler. Joe looks down at him with panic on his face. “Stop the car,” he says suddenly.

Copley slams on the brakes, swinging the car over to the side of the road. Joe is already twisting and scrabbling for the door handle as the car jolts to a stop. He throws the door open and there’s a frantic scramble as Nicky hauls himself over Joe’s lap, Joe grabbing him and pulling him halfway out of the car just in time.

Nile wrinkles her nose as she hears Nicky retch out of the side of the car. Joe is propping him up, one hand smoothing down Nicky’s back over and over again. His jacket has fallen off, lying forgotten in the footwell. Booker and Andy watch on, similar sympathetic grimaces on their faces. Copley glances over his shoulder, winces and turns back to face the road.

“You cannot believe that you’re hallucinating _this_ ,” Andy remarks as Nicky pauses for breath, hanging halfway out the car and probably only staying in place by Joe’s arm wrapped around his chest and holding him up. She reaches out and pats Nicky’s leg. “Seriously, Nicky. This is too disgusting for you to want to imagine. It’s got to be real.”

Nicky coughs, and then starts retching again, leaning back out the car. Joe winces. “Oh, Nicolo,” he says softly. “You never do anything by halves, do you?”

“We might have a problem.”

Nile twists to see Booker staring out of the back window of the jeep, his hand hovering over his rifle, as a police car draws closer and then starts to indicate as it slows down. “Shit,” Nile says instinctively. “Booker, get down. Cover yourself with the blanket. Andy-”

Andy picks up Joe’s jacket and shoves it at Joe. “Get it on him,” she says. “Quickly. Copley, come up with something smart.”

Nile watches a police officer gets out of the car, slipping on a bright hi-vis jacket against the drizzling rain. Joe is pulling a shaking Nicky into his jacket and zipping it up tight even as Nicky swallows heavily and leans back out the car. Booker is hidden in the back, and Nile tugs her own jacket more securely around her to conceal the obvious bloodstains on her shirt.

Copley rolls down the window as the police officer approaches. “Can I help you, officer?” he asks pleasantly. Nile summons up a smile that she’s sure doesn’t come across as genuine as the officer glances into the car, and then looks past her to Nicky and Joe.

“Everything okay here?” he asks, nodding back at them. Joe doesn’t even bother looking around to the front of the car, still propping Nicky up with an arm around him. Nile can just make out soft murmurs in what sounds like Italian.

“Car sickness,” Copley says with a wince. “Sorry if we pulled over in an awkward place. A few minutes and we’ll be on our way again, I’m sure.”

The officer nods. “How far have you got to go?”

“Only an hour or so,” Copley replies. He twists to look over at Nile. “Is that right?”

“Yeah, I think that’s about right,” Nile replies, keeping her voice steady and not looking down to where a handgun is stashed in the side of the door. “He’ll be fine in a few minutes, I think, and then we’ll get going.”

The officer glances in the back of the car again. “Give me a second,” he says. He turns and walks back towards his car behind them.

Nile reaches down and checks the distance to the handgun stashed in the side of the car. A glance over her shoulder shows Andy reaching out and wrapping one hand over the handle of a knife stashed between the seats. Joe is glancing between them and Nicky, one hand on the gun tucked in the back of his jeans.

“Keep calm,” Copley murmurs, glancing in the rearview mirror. “Let’s not go in guns blazing until we have to.”

“If they start shooting, I’m not just going to get shot,” Nile mutters back.

Copley gives her a strange look. “They don’t have guns,” he says. “None of the police in this country do. At worst, they might have a taser.” He glances into the back of the car. “Nobody do anything unless we have to.”

Nile watches over her shoulder as the officer opens his car door, rummages around inside for a moment, and then straightens back up. He walks back over. Her hand inches down the side of the seat, the grip of the handgun only a few inches away.

The officer comes back to the window. “Here,” he says, and he holds out a water bottle. “For your friend. If he’s alright to get back in the car for a few minutes, can you just move your car along? There’s a layby a little ways ahead that will be safer, where you can stop properly.”

Copley takes the water bottle, and passes it back over his shoulder to Andy. “Thanks,” he says. He turns to the back. “How are we doing?”

“We can get moving,” Joe says, not looking away from Nicky as he takes the bottle of water off Andy and presses it into Nicky’s hands. Nicky twists the cap off, his hands shaking, but manages to gulp down some of the water. “Back in the car, my love?” Joe asks softly. “Just for a little bit, yes?”

Nicky looks up. He glances over at the car, and Nile sees the moment that he notices the police officer. “It’s all good,” Nile says. “We just need to move the car to a layby up ahead so we’re not in the way.”

Nicky glances over at Joe, and then slowly nods. “I’m fine,” he rasps, being incredibly unconvincing in almost every way possible. “Let’s go.”

“Go as slow as you need,” the officer says. “I’ll follow you to the layby, see you safely there, okay?” He heads back to his car, and Nicky slowly slides inside the car and pulls the door shut. Copley starts the car and eases out onto the road as Nile keeps one eye on the police car following behind them and the other on Nicky. Not that she can actually do anything if he starts throwing up again.

Joe carefully puts an arm around him, and Nicky’s head drops down onto Joe’s shoulder. “This…this is real?” he asks, his voice so quiet that Nile has to strain to hear him.

“Yes, my love,” Joe says evenly. “This is real.”

“Oh.” Nicky looks around the car, at all of them. “And I’m not hallucinating Copley driving?”

Copley waves one hand. “Hi there, Nicky. You’ve been a right bugger to find.”

“Hilarious,” Andy says. She reaches over and grasps Nicky’s leg. “Back with us?”

Nicky hums, low in his throat. “Maybe.” His face whitens as Copley swings into the layby, Nile bracing herself against the swoop of the car, and Joe is already reaching for the door as they pull to a stop. Nicky swings his legs out of the car and just sits there, head hanging over his knees and breathing harshly. Joe rests a hand on his back, and a tremor runs through Nicky’s body until he’s shaking again.

The police car pulls up beside them. “There’s a small hospital in the next town, if you stick on this road for twenty minutes,” the officer says, rolling down the window and leaning across to talk to them. “Minor injuries only, but if he’s not better in a little while then that’s always an option. I’ll drive back round in half an hour, and if you’re still here I can blue-light you there. Easier than getting an ambulance all the way out here.”

“Thank you, officer,” Copley says smoothly. “I think we’ll be alright, but thank you.”

“Take care,” the officer says, and then he pulls off and the car disappears down the road.

Nile lets out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding. “Well,” Booker says, pushing the blanket back off him and sitting up in the boot. “That went surprisingly well.”

“We need to get moving,” Andy says. “Nicky? Still in one piece?”

Nicky takes a deep breath, and sits back up. “How long?” he asks quietly.

Joe flinches. His hand pauses on Nicky’s back, fingers gripping at the leather of the jacket. “Nearly seven months,” Nile says in the sudden silence that has fallen across the car. “It’s mid-October right now.”

Nicky lets out a breath. “Okay,” he murmurs, nodding to himself. “Okay.” He scuffs his shoe across the dirt. “I can’t decide if that’s good or not. I lost track of how long it was a while back.”

Joe makes a wordless noise, and Nile reaches over the back seat to grasp at Joe’s shoulder. “They moved you around a lot,” she says to Nicky. “We were a few steps behind pretty much all the way up until now. Kept finding where they’d kept you but not where they’d taken you by the time we got there, until they fucked up and we managed to catch up.”

“Tried not to make it easy for them,” Nicky says, rubbing at his face. “They didn’t start with the drugs straight away. It was…it was more like Merrick’s, to start. I think I made too much trouble for them. That’s when they started drugging me. Stringing me up.”

Joe looks like he’s about to rip apart the jacket with how tightly he’s gripping it. “And you hallucinated us?” Nile asks quietly.

Nicky nods. “Joe, mostly,” he says.

Andy snorts. “Obviously. Did I feature much? I’m okay with a supporting role, but I would like to have at least some lines.”

A smile curls the corner of Nicky’s mouth. “You were there, boss. You too, Nile, though you didn’t say as much.”

Nile glances instinctively at Booker. Booker’s mouth twists in a wry smile, and he just shakes his head at her look and turns away. “We don’t have to do this now,” Joe says, giving Andy a look when she looks like she’s about to say something. “No. We do not have to do this now. We have him again. Anything else can wait.”

Copley starts driving again, and Nile keeps a close eye on Nicky as Joe wraps him up in his arms. She can’t quite tell which one of them it is that’s shaking.

0-o-0-o-0

The car ride is excruciating.

Copley leaves as soon as they reach the nearest town, Andy slipping into the driver’s seat. Booker gets out of the trunk, and Joe sees how Nile glances between him and the empty back seat, before getting out and circling around to get in the back with him. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about anything other than the feeling of Nicky in his arms.

Nicky shifts restlessly. His elbow digs into Joe’s side, and a shiver runs through him again. Joe wraps his arms tighter around him, as tight as he can, and presses his cheek to the top of Nicky’s head. He can smell old blood and sweat, and the sickening tang of bleach and antiseptics underneath it, enough to make bile rise in the back of his throat, but he holds on. He can’t do anything but keep holding on.

Andy takes them out of the town and into the countryside. It feels like they drive for hours, but Joe doesn’t notice. He knows that he should be paying attention to their route, to whether they’re being followed, working out the next steps after finding Nicky that have been so far out of reach for so very long, but he can’t. His entire world has narrowed down to the steady breaths ghosting across his neck, Nicky’s hand clasped around his forearm. Nicky, in his arms.

The sun is setting when they finally pull up in front of an old stone cottage, after miles of gravel roads and dirt tracks. It looks only a few years away from falling down. There is ivy covering one side, empty window frames missing glass and boarded up, and the door hanging rotted off the hinges. “It’s safe,” Andy says as she turns off the engine and reaches for her door. “There are enough supplies inside for a few days.”

The wind is biting as soon as Nicky opens the door and staggers out. Joe follows close behind, one hand staying firmly on Nicky’s back. Only a few steps from the car, Nicky’s knees buckle. Joe grabs him, slinging one of his arms over his shoulder. “Nicolo,” he says frantically, propping Nicky up. “Nicolo, are you with me?”

An arm reaches out to steady Nicky from the other side, and Joe wrenches Nicky away from Booker, wrapping an arm around Nicky’s waist and taking more of his weight. He doesn’t care about the flash of hurt so obvious on Booker’s face, the way his hand lingers outstretched in the air for a moment before dropping. He doesn’t. His world is Nicky, Nicky and the tremors running through him as he sways where they stand.

The inside of the cottage is as decrepit as the outside, stripped down to concrete floors and walls, the bare minimum needed for this to function as a safehouse. Joe sees Andy pull the door shut behind them, sees Nile carry in duffel bags and Booker the bag of files that he dumps onto the table, but he doesn’t pay it any attention. He pulls Nicky upstairs, a more defensible position. There is only one room past the hallway, camp beds pushed against the walls and empty windows boarded up against the cold. Distantly, he thinks that he hears Nile say something to Andy downstairs, but he doesn’t care.

The door shuts behind him and then Nicky is in his arms.

Joe can barely breathe. He pulls Nicky in, closer and closer until there is nothing but the solid warmth of his body, until he can feel every breath that Nicky takes, every tremor that runs through him. Nicky grips him back, head buried into the crook of Joe’s neck, and Joe finds his hand coming up to cradle the back of Nicky’s head, like it is the most precious thing in existence at that moment.

He doesn’t know how long they stay like that, until Nicky raises his head and shushes him. “I’m here,” he says softly, his voice rasping. “I’m here, Yusuf, I’m here.”

Joe realises that he is sobbing. Gasping for breath as he clutches Nicky close to him, tears streaming down his face and soaking into his own jacket that is still hanging loose off Nicky’s frame. “Yusuf,” Nicky says again, his hands coming up to frame Joe’s face. “Yusuf, look at me.”

Joe does. Of course he does. “I always knew you would come,” Nicky says, and the steadfast devotion in his voice makes Joe lose any semblance of grip he was getting back over himself, and he dissolves into fresh sobs. “I knew, Yusuf,” Nicky says, pressing their foreheads together. “I knew.”

“I’m sorry I took so long,” Joe gets out. Nicky shakes his head, and Joe buries his head in Nicky’s shoulder. He doesn’t know if it’s Nicky shaking or himself, only that the floor is unsteady beneath them and the rest of the room fading out. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I’m so sorry, Nicolo, I-”

“I forgive you, now and always,” Nicky says, and Joe’s knees buckle in relief and exhaustion and sheer, overwhelming love for the man finally back in his arms.

Nicky doesn’t stay upright for much longer. He’s exhausted, barely awake as Joe pulls his bloodied clothes off and pushes him gently into one of the beds. “Go to sleep, love,” Joe says softly, carding his hand through Nicky’s hair where he’s sat on the edge of the bed. There’s still blood dried across Nicky’s face, across his torso underneath the blankets, but Nicky shows no sign of caring, and therefore Joe pushes it to later. So much can be dealt with later.

Nicky’s eyes slip shut, and his breathing evens out. A few moments later and he jerks awake, eyes wide as he sits up, flailing against the blankets. “I’m here, I’m here,” Joe says quickly, cupping Nicky’s face and pulling him close. “You’re safe, you’re okay. I’m here.”

Nicky breathes out, his head dropping down onto Joe’s shoulder. Joe presses his lips to Nicky’s temple. They sit there for a few moments, Joe listening to the slight rasps of Nicky’s breathing, before Nicky slides back down onto the bed and his eyes shut again.

This happens three more times, and each time, Joe can feel his control fraying a little further. The third time that Nicky wakes up gasping for air, flinching from Joe’s first touch, Joe pulls the blankets back and strips off his own top. “Shuffle over,” he says, nudging at Nicky. Nicky drags himself over on the bed, exhaustion in every line of his body, and Joe fits in behind him. He wraps his arms around Nicky’s waist and pulls him in until Nicky’s back is pressed against the bare skin of Joe’s chest. “Sleep, love,” he murmurs, running a hand down the plane of Nicky’s chest. Nicky’s eyes fall shut, and his breathing evens out. This time, he doesn’t stir.

Joe can’t do the same. Every time he shuts his eyes he sees Nicky hanging there. Sees the calm certainty on his face as he stares straight at Andy and tells her that they haven’t really come for him, that they are just hallucinations within his head and he is still on his own, hanging from a ceiling and waiting for people who are already there.

He can hear movement downstairs, the rustle of bags and quiet murmurs that he can’t make out. Andy’s voice, and then Nile’s, and then another that makes his hold on Nicky tighten instinctively.

If Nicky was awake, he might accuse Joe of being unfair. Of holding onto anger unnecessarily. If he had been there the past few months, Joe knows he would have softened the anger and that hollow ache of betrayal, more because he doesn’t want Joe hurting than for any idea of forgiveness. But Nicky isn’t awake. He hasn’t been here, letting Joe cover his six and get angry and bluster, knowing that Nicky will listen and not judge, and then remind him of the gift that they have been given together. And there lies the problem.

Joe waits until Nicky is deep asleep, and then slowly slips out of the bed. He pulls his shirt back on, tucks the blankets up over Nicky’s shoulders, and pads barefoot out of the room. Nicky sleeps on behind him.

The room falls silent as Joe walks downstairs and out into the space. All three look up at him; Nile with obvious surprise, Andy with a resigned weariness, and Booker with an expression of guilt and worry that immediately makes the anger rise in Joe’s gut. Documents and pictures are spread out across the table where they’re sat, and Nile makes a grab for the nearest stack of pictures, quickly flipping them over and sending a flurry of papers to the floor in her haste.

“I was going to bring up some food, if that’s why you’ve come down,” Nile says, her voice cautious.

Joe doesn’t even look at her. He can’t look away from Booker, at the pieces of paper clutched in his hands so tightly that they’re trembling, waving in the air in a taunt. Like Nicky can be reduced down to a stack of documents. To a report.

There’s an empty chair at the table. Joe pulls it out and spins it around, the legs screeching across the stone floor. He straddles it, facing Booker, and rests his arms on the back of the chair. “Tell me,” he says, his voice quiet as he stares Booker down, “were you really that stupid to not see this coming, or did you just not care?”

“Joe,” Andy says in warning. Joe holds up one hand, not looking away from Booker.

“No,” he says, his voice hard. “Do not stop me. I kept my silence when Nile brought him in, and I kept my silence for two months as we searched with him beside us, because I was willing to take help from anyone, do anything, if it meant that Nicolo was found. I would walk through fire, for him. But we have him now, I have him, and I will not ignore the reason he was taken.” He stares at Booker. “Did you not see this coming?” he asks again. “Or did you just not care?”

“I care,” Booker says, his voice hoarse. “God, Joe, you know that I _never_ meant for any of this to happen. I- I didn’t think-”

“Obviously,” Joe says sarcastically, unable to keep the anger climbing up his throat from spilling onto his tongue. “You didn’t think. You didn’t think that betraying us would end with Nicky and myself strapped to tables in a lab, shut away and stripped of everything, experimented on like _animals_. You didn’t think that news of what we are would get out and that other people would come for our secrets, for _us_. You didn’t think that what you did would have consequences for the people that you call family.”

“Joe,” Andy snaps. “Rein it the fuck in. Booker is sorry, and you know he is.”

“Sorry?” Joe asks. “For what? For getting us hurt? Or for not finding a way to die?”

“Joe!” Nile exclaims.

Joe shakes his head. “Would you like to know what I think the answer to my question is?” he asks quietly. “I think that you are too smart not to have predicted at least some of the consequences of your actions, but I also think that you thought they would find something. A way out for you. And then it wouldn’t matter if you had betrayed your family, because you wouldn’t have to worry about anything anymore.” He tilts his head, studying Booker’s face. “Am I right?”

Booker shoves his chair back and gets to his feet. “I may have fucked up, but I’m not just going to sit here and let you use me as a way to burn off seven months of…of whatever this is. I was going to stay away for a century, like you decided. I only came back because I knew finding Nicky was more important than however much you hate me for my part in this.” He glances away at Andy and Nile. “I’m going out. I’ll be back later.”

“Am I right?” Joe just asks again as Booker turns away

“Fuck you,” Booker spits, his face twisting as he looks back over his shoulder. “You don’t have any idea what it’s like to outlive the people you would die for, watch them waste away whilst you can’t even get burnt in the sun. You have no idea what you would do if you didn’t have Nicky right there beside you.”

Joe slams his hand down on the table. “ _Am I right?”_

The cottage falls silent. Booker is frozen, turned away from the door. Nile’s gaze flicks between the two of them, over and over again. Out of the corner of his eye, Joe watches Andy pull out a hip flask.

“You have no idea,” Booker says quietly. “You have had Nicky. You have always had Nicky, and you have never needed anything else.” He turns back to Joe, his face shadowed. “You are right,” he says. “If I was dead, what did it matter what happened afterwards? I wouldn’t be there. I wouldn’t have to feel this…this _grief_ , day and night. And that’s all that mattered.”

“All that mattered?” Joe surges to his feet. “You _bastard_. You think that is a good enough reason to betray us all? Nicky was hanging from _chains_. They had drugged him to the point that he couldn’t tell I was really there. My Nicolo, and he believed that I was a hallucination. That I had not come for him. You did this, Sebastien. You did this to us.” He stalks forwards, staring Booker down. “Do you know what Nicolo did in those first few weeks? Do you know what he agonised over?”

Booker stays silent, and Joe resists the urge to grab him and shove him against the nearest wall. “He spent _weeks_ wondering where he has gone wrong,” Joe snaps. “How he had somehow missed this. Like it was his fault. Like you hadn’t put so much effort into hiding your betrayal from your family, the people who are meant to be there for you. Why he hadn’t been _better_ , when he is the best out of all of us!” He heaves a breath, and ignores the stinging in his eyes. “You- you did that to him,” he says. “You made him doubt everything he has done for the past two centuries, because he believed that your betrayal was his fault. And just when I had pulled him away from that, when I had persuaded him that the blame does not lie on his shoulders, he was taken from me. Because of you. All of it, because of you.”

Booker’s gaze is hollow, but he stares steadily back at Joe. “You have no idea,” he says again. “You said you would walk through fire for Nicky? I would have done that a thousand times for my children, before I ever knew that I would survive it.” He takes a step closer, and Joe instinctively readies himself at the look in his eyes.

“Imagine,” Booker says, his voice low. “Just for a moment, that Nicky is dying.”

Joe punches him right in the face.

There’s the screech of a chair against the floor as Nile jumps to her feet. Joe lets her grab his arm and tug him back. “Say that again, you piece of shit,” he snarls, and Nile’s grip tightens to the point of pain. “Say that the fuck again.”

Booker turns to the side and spits blood out onto the floor. “Imagine that Nicky is dying,” he says again, the red already fading along his jaw. “Imagine that he is dying, and you are not. And that no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, you cannot stop it. You cannot give him your immortality. You can only sit there, and watch, until he is gone. He is gone, and you are left.”

Joe can hear every breath roaring in his ears as Booker turns back to face him. “Imagine that, for a moment,” he says. “You are alone. The person you loved most in the world is gone. And you can still walk through fires, but what is the point? Why does it matter anymore? Imagine that, Joe, and then maybe you might have the barest idea of what my past two centuries have been.”

Joe surges forwards and grabs Booker’s collar, Nile’s fingers digging painfully into his arm before he pulls out of her grasp. He shoves Booker back until he hits the wall, the anger surging under his skin until Booker can barely breathe under his hands. “If you think,” he snarls, “that I could ever betray us like you did- you fucking piece of shit, you-”

“Go on, keep shouting,” Booker snarls back, twisting in his grip. “Take it out on me. Pretend that you weren’t desperate enough to do anything, anything at all, these past months just to get Nicky back. Pretend that you don’t know the edges of the pit I’ve been fucking living in for centuries. Pretend that you have any idea what’s waiting for you down here.” He grips Joe’s wrists, but doesn’t pull them away. “You have no idea what it’s like. You cannot.”

“You think that I do not know loneliness?” Joe spits. “You think that because I have Nicky, and Nicky has me, we have not had to watch everyone else die around us? Nicky had sisters whose faces he no longer remembers. I had a mother who I promised to stay safe for, and who I never returned to.” He shakes Booker, grips him by the collar and shakes him like he can somehow just make him see. “You think Andy would not know? She has been on this Earth for millennia, she has forgotten more people than you have known, and you think she would not know loneliness?”

Booker scoffs. “What would you have said?” he asks. “What could you have done?”

“We could have told you that we all got lonely!” Joe shouts, shoving Booker back up against the wall again. His hands are shaking where they grip Booker’s collar, entirely without his permission. “We could have told you that all of us have had to give things up for this life, that sometimes it crashes down on you until you can barely move, and that it doesn’t _last_. It is never permanent. We could have told you that!”

“It is not the same,” Booker spits back. His eyes are wet, his breathing harsh as he stares Joe down, crowded up against the wall and not making any effort to push away. “You cannot understand. They were my _sons._ My _children_.”

Joe stares at him. “Then why?” he asks. His eyes sting and tears spill down over his cheeks, and he can feel himself trembling so hard that he thinks he could shake out of his own skin. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why didn’t you _tell_ us?”

Booker stares at him in shock. “Why didn’t you tell us?” Joe asks again, his voice cracking on the words. “We are your family, we are the people who have been beside you for the past two centuries. You could have come to us! You could have told us all of this, at any time. Do you think that we would not have helped? Do you think we would not have put everything aside to try and help you?” There are tears running down his cheeks unbidden now, and he pushes Booker back into the wall again, the heat of his throat so close to his hands that he can feel his pulse, stuttering under his skin. “You could have told us!” he shouts. “You could have asked us for help!”

Booker stares back at him. “You could have asked, as well,” he says quietly.

His voice cuts through Joe, carving a line straight through his chest. All of the anger flows out of it, drains away into the floor. Joe drops him, steps back as Booker shakes himself off and straightens his shirt. “You could have asked,” he says again, not looking away from Joe. “Some days, I was nearly on my knees, begging you to ask me what was wrong. But you didn’t. And now we are here.”

Booker looks over at Andy and Nile, frozen behind him. “I’ll be back in a few hours,” he says to them, and then he turns and leaves.

Joe lets him go. He doesn’t think he could move, even if he wanted to. He is rooted to the ground, all the anger spilling out of him until nothing is left but an empty hollow in his chest where once so much waited.

Guilt quickly takes its place, spreading under his skin and sending more tears spilling out down his cheeks. The door swings shut behind Booker, and the cottage falls silent.

There’s the scrape of a chair, and then a hand closes on his shoulder. “Joe,” Andy says.

Joe clears his throat, scraping the back of his hand over his eyes. “I should- Nicky,” he gets out, his voice rasping in his throat. “I-”

He turns, shrugging off Andy’s arm and not watching Nile as she heads for the door after Booker, and leaves.

Halfway up the stairs, he comes around the corner to find Nicky sat on one of the steps. The blanket from the bed is draped around his shoulders, his bare feet tucked up underneath him as he leans against the wall. At Joe’s approach, his eyes flicker open.

“Nicolo,” Joe breathes, rushing forwards and dropping down to his knees in front of him. He reaches out, but for a moment can’t bring himself to close the distance. “Is everything okay?”

Nicky reads the intent in Joe’s motions, and a hundred more things, as he always does. He shifts, pressing his knee into one of Joe’s outstretched hands. “I woke up and you weren’t there,” he says simply. “I could hear voices from downstairs. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, actually, but…” He shrugs, a sad smile playing across his face. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Joe says, and both of them know that it’s a lie.

“Later,” Nicky says when Joe tries to speak. He gets to his feet and takes Joe’s hand, tugging him up the stairs. “It can wait, Yusuf. It can all wait.”

Joe lets himself be guided to bed. He strips his top off and slides back until he’s up against the wall in mechanical motions, letting his body take over as Nicky gets into bed beside him. His arms know where to place themselves to pull Nicky close to him, his legs know how to curl into the shape of Nicky’s body. His body knows where to rest.

With Nicky in his arms, he lets sleep claim him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said above, I'm aiming for nuance. I hope that came across.
> 
> This entire story developed from the idea of Nicky being drugged out of his mind enough to be convinced that Joe is a hallucination when he is right in front of him. I have Thoughts about immortality where the only immortal thing about them is that they don't age and heal from injuries, but in all other ways are apparently very human. I had no idea that 35k would spiral out of that, but given my track record, I shouldn't be surprised.
> 
> If you are wondering why I wrote something the way I did, or my thoughts on a particular character, ask away in the comments! I love talking meta about my stories and will ramble on way too long if you let me. I'm also over on tumblr [here](theheirofashandfire.tumblr.com) where I occasionally put up snippets of fic. I apologise for the mess in advance. I've been there too long to have a coherent anything.
> 
> As always, kudos and comments are much loved!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Chapter content warnings:** minor dissociation, mentions of a character recovering from forced starvation, vague mention of medical procedures used as torture, canon-typical violence, panic attacks.

He wakes in an unfamiliar place.

He has become practised, these past months, at pretending to be asleep. Nicky keeps his breathing even and steady, his eyes shut and his body lax, even as he can feel his heart pick up and stutter.

Something isn’t right.

His head is resting on something soft, the faint musty smell of fabric under his cheek so different to the damp cold and tang of chemicals he has become so accustomed to. A gentle weight is across his legs. He’s warm, which is definitely wrong. He hasn’t been warm for months.

Nicky opens his eyes, just enough to look out through his eyelashes. There is a bed across from him, a pile of blankets tangled on top of it. A duffel bag is set at the end of it, contents spilling out, and he frowns slightly. He recognises that bag, he thinks. Does he? Everything is a muffled blur of exhaustion and that ever-present hunger sitting deep in his stomach, and he doesn’t know what to think. He doesn’t know where he is.

There’s a rustle of cloth, and the bed tilts underneath him as someone behind him moves. An arm shifts where it is wrapped around his waist, a hand smoothing across his side.

Nicky tenses. The person behind him notices, the arm tightening and then disappearing entirely.

Another touch, this time at his shoulder, and Nicky can’t help but flinch. There’s a choked off sound from somewhere behind him. “Nicolo?”

He knows that voice. He is achingly familiar with that voice, has imprinted it on his memory over centuries spent together. He has woken up countless mornings to that voice in his ear, murmured against his skin, soft with sleep.

He has heard it many times over the past months, and each time it has proved to be a lie. Something made up by his own head, aided by cocktails of drugs that he still remembers burning through his veins.

There is pressure on his shoulder, and Nicky lets himself be rolled over. He opens his eyes to see Joe hovering above him, a small smile curling his lips, just like it does when he’s worried and trying not to show it.

“Hello, sleeping beauty,” he says softly. His hand moves to cup Nicky’s face, thumb smoothing across Nicky’s cheek. Nicky leans into the touch without hesitation. “Awake already?”

Nicky couldn’t look away from his face, even if he wanted to. “Where are we?” he asks. Joe’s hand is warm against his skin, and he can’t remember if any of his hallucinations have carried such weight before.

“Somewhere in the middle of England,” Joe replies, sitting up a little further. The blanket slips from around his shoulders, pooling around his waist with a soft thump. His knee bangs into Nicky’s thigh as he sits up, and Nicky instinctively winces, even as his mind reels. “One of Andy’s safehouses. We haven’t been here before.” He huffs a small laugh, thumb still stroking across Nicky’s cheek in a familiar pattern. “Bit too shabby for my tastes.”

Nicky pushes himself up on his elbows to look around. The floor is bare concrete, the windows boarded up. Ivy is creeping in from one window to climb up towards the ceiling. There are other beds, all of them empty but with blankets and bags piled on top of them. A small folding table set next to the bed he’s in, with a rechargeable lamp he recognises as Andy’s from the dents where she whacked Joe around the head with it after losing a poker game.

He can’t remember seeing anything other than labs and cells in these past months. He can’t remember any of those drug-induced hallucinations carrying such weight before.

He was hanging. He remembers that, hanging from his arms, his toes barely scraping the floor. He frowns, trying to follow that thread, and then Joe’s hand comes to rest on his side and the rest of it comes pouring back in through the cracks.

Joe’s expression as the door had burst open. Him and Andy, holding him up. Nile in the doorway as he’d tried to run, so convinced that this was another trick. How she had stood in his way and grabbed him, holding onto him even as he fought with the little strength that he still had to get free.

Booker, unlocking the handcuffs with tears in his eyes. Copley, in the front seat of a car. Joe, always Joe, his arms around him and his voice in his ear. He tries to remember more, what Joe had said to him in that car beyond just the murmur of his voice, but the rest of it is hazy and indistinct, and it stays stubbornly out of reach.

“Breathe, Nicolo. Just breathe now, my love. Breathe with me.”

Nicky realises that he’s shaking. Everything feels insubstantial around him, as if any moment he will wake up and find all of this slipping through his fingers. Joe’s arms tighten around his waist, pulling Nicky back against his chest. “Nicolo,” he just murmurs, his breath ghosting across the skin of Nicky’s neck. His arms are heavy around Nicky’s waist, his chin digging into the flesh of Nicky’s shoulder, and the weight of it all drags Nicky back until he can finally breathe again.

“Is there a shower here?”

Joe laughs, his body shaking against Nicky’s. “Andy’s safehouses never have such luxuries,” he says. “But there is hot water, and towels, and Nile is a modern person who has taken to stashing deodorant in her bag. We can make do.”

Nicky leans back into Joe’s hold. “I missed you,” he says quietly.

Joe makes a sound like all the breath has been punched out of him. “And I you,” he replies, his voice so soft Nicky can barely hear it. “I did not stop looking for you,” he says after a few moments. “I could not. Nile threatened to tie me to a table just to make me eat dinner on some days.”

As if on cue, Nicky’s stomach rumbles. He can feel Joe’s smile against his neck, the low laugh that runs through his body. “I thought you would sleep for longer,” Joe says. “It’s only been a few hours.”

“I think I’m more hungry than tired right now,” Nicky admits. “Andy usually keeps her safehouses well-stocked, though I think I will stay away from the canned meats. Not sure I can handle a spam sandwich. Or Bovril.”

Joe laughs again. “Nobody should have to eat Bovril,” he says. He keeps up a steady stream of light banter about Andy’s worse habits as Nicky digs out some new clothes and nearly falls over his own feet getting into them. Joe steadies him, hands heavy on his hips as Nicky shoves his feet in boots and tries not to trip over. His legs are unsteady underneath him. It’s been a while since he’s actually walked anywhere, and not been dragged or wheeled, strapped down to a table.

“You’ll get it back,” Joe says. He hands Nicky a sweater from an open duffel bag at the foot of the bed. He gives Nicky a small smile at the frown Nicky knows is on his face. “You were talking out loud, love.”

Nicky’s frown deepens, tugging the sweater over his head. It smells like Joe. “Oh. A habit, I suppose.”

Joe’s smile stays on his face by what looks like sheer will. He reaches out and smooths the sweater down. The sleeves are slightly too long and Joe starts rolling them up, neatly tugging the sweater into place. “You’ll catch up on sleep soon,” he says, not looking up from what is apparently a task that requires intense concentration. “And put the muscle back on. Do you know how many times- no, that doesn’t matter. Enough to drain you, obviously. Dying always takes up a lot of energy. You’ll get it all back soon.”

“I know,” Nicky says quietly. He lets Joe fuss, lets him pull his leather jacket over the sweater and rub Nicky’s hands between his in an effort to bring some colour back to them. The room is cold, even in all the layers Joe has now pushed on him. Joe steps away for a moment, and then reappears with a wool hat in his hands. “Joe,” Nicky says, not taking the hat when he tries to hand it over. “Let’s go downstairs.”

Joe glances up at him, and that smile has disappeared now. “Booker is here. I don’t know if you remember that.”

“I do.” Nicky doesn’t know what to do with that knowledge, with the sinking feeling in his stomach at the thought of trying to go downstairs and pretend that he isn’t the reason that any of this happened, that Joe didn’t just spend months searching for him because of Booker’s decisions. His betrayal. But there is a thin film of exhaustion over everything as he slips his hand into Joe’s, and he’s so damn hungry. “Later,” he says. “It…it can wait. I just want something to eat.”

There are voices rising up from below, that become more distinct as Nicky heads for the stairs. The moment that he steps on the first step and it creaks beneath his foot, the voices abruptly stop.

Joe’s hand settles at the small of Nicky’s back. “Say the word, and I will throw him out of here on his arse to fend for himself in the dark,” he murmurs in Nicky’s ear. “I have been thinking of doing so for months, and only the knowledge that he was helping find you kept me from doing so. Say the word, Nicolo.”

Nicky is tempted. He can’t deny that he’s tempted. He’s spent months alone, going back over every moment leading up to Copley and Merrick, trying to find the first tug on the thread that unravelled everything. Trying to find the moment where if he had just said something, if he had just noticed the depths of Booker’s desperation, he could have prevented this. He could have stopped all of this.

Joe, like always, can read so much from just the line of his shoulders. “This is not your fault, Nicolo,” he says firmly, stepping around to stand in front of him. He’s looking up at Nicky now, on the step below him, his hands bracketing Nicky’s face as he pulls him down to press a kiss to his forehead. “I can hear you thinking,” he murmurs against Nicky’s skin. “Stop. Booker made his choices. You didn’t make them for him. Stop feeling guilty over something that was done to us.”

Nicky’s lips twist. “I heard him, earlier,” he says quietly. “We could have asked. We knew something was wrong. It doesn’t- he had no right to make the decisions he did, he had no right to do any of what he did, and I am so- I am _furious_ , but…” He shakes his head. “We could have asked.”

He doesn’t know what to do with this churning mess of anger and guilt that’s been seething in the pit of his stomach for so long. He can feel his hands shaking again, and Joe takes them in his, holding them tight. “Nicolo,” he says, and the tone of his voice makes Nicky think that it’s not the first time he’s said his name. “Nicolo?”

Nicky focuses back on Joe’s face. “I’m here.”

Joe squeezes his hands. “You don’t have to talk to him,” he says, his voice a low murmur. “You don’t even have to look at him. We can just go down there, eat, and then come straight back up to go back to sleep. You look exhausted, my love. Booker can wait.” He presses a quick kiss to Nicky’s lips. “Or, we can go down there and I will hold him down whilst you exact whatever you wish to.”

Nicky gives into the urge to drop his head down onto Joe’s shoulder. “I’m just tired,” he murmurs. “And hungry.”

“Food, then,” Joe says. He presses a kiss into Nicky’s hair. “Let’s go.”

When they finally make it downstairs, Nile is waiting at the foot of it. The moment that Nicky steps from the last step onto the concrete floor, her arms are flung around him. “I’ve missed you, you _bastard_ ,” she says into his shoulder, nearly lifting him off his feet with the force of her hug. “Don’t you ever do that again, or I swear to God I will tie you down and never let you out of my sight. You _dick_.”

Nicky returns the hug with a laugh. “You will have to fight Joe for the privilege,” he says. He pulls back, looking her up and down. “You look good.”

“You look skinny.” Nile grabs his hands and pulls him further into the room, Joe a step behind. “I feel like I’m being possessed by my grandmother, with this sudden urge to feed you up.”

She lets go of him just as Andy reaches them. “Hey, boss,” Nicky says.

“Don’t you _hey, boss_ me,” Andy says fiercely, but there’s a smile on her face as she tugs Nicky forwards and into another bruising embrace. “You have no idea how fucking good it is to have you back,” she says, her voice muffled in his shoulder. “Don’t _ever_ do that again, Nicky.”

Nicky returns the hug, letting his eyes slip shut for a moment as he rests his head on her shoulder. “I’m not planning to, boss.”

Andy pulls back. “Good. Now. Nile has made chili for all of us. Nicky, you get a violently artificial fruit juice, and chicken soup. If you can manage that, then there is tea, and maybe a peanut butter sandwich if you’re lucky.”

Nicky’s nose crinkles. “Coffee?” he asks.

“Tea,” Andy says firmly. “I will not be swayed.”

Nile looks between the two of them. “Nicky can have my chili as well?” she says slowly. “There’s plenty to go around.”

Joe’s hand is warm on Nicky’s back as he steps up beside him. “He’s been starved,” he says, his voice softening a little at the expression on Nile’s face. “Too much too quickly and it won’t go too well.” Nile’s eyes widen, and Nicky gives her what he thinks is a reassuring expression. “We’ve done these sorts of things before,” Joe adds. “A couple weeks and it’ll be back to normal. Or whatever passes for normal, for us.”

Andy gives Nicky one last hug and then steps back. Nicky looks past her to the rest of the room.

It’s minimal, an echo of upstairs. A stove and sink line one wall, a ratted sofa pushed up against another where ivy creeps in through a crack in the wall. The door is lopsided in its frame, the sky slowly darkening outside. There’s the hint of rain in the air.

Nicky finally turns to look at the table in the middle of the room. Piles of paper are spread out across it, some neatly stacked and some just haphazard jumbles of folders and dense type. There is one stack that appears to be made up entirely of photographs. As he looks over, the stack is picked up and flipped over, the photos disappearing.

“You don’t want to see this.”

Nicky looks up at Booker. He’s sat at the table, hand still pressed down on the stack. “You- you don’t want to see it,” he says, his voice hoarse.

Nicky turns to Andy. “What is this?”

“We’re trying to put a timeline together,” Andy replies as Nile heads for the stove and the pot bubbling on top. “We took these from the place that they held you, but it’s all a mess. Copley is chasing down the leads left, but he needs the information in these files to properly tie it all up and make sure we can’t be found again.” She sits back down at the table, pulling a stack towards her. “That pile over there is complete reports, sorted chronologically, that one is unsorted lab books and journal entries, and this pile here is just random pieces of paper that we don’t understand yet. If you can remember anything useful…”

Nicky sits down at the table, purposefully angling his chair away from Booker. “Take me through it,” he says.

He feels Joe’s hand on his shoulder, a silent question that Nicky answers when he pulls the nearest pieces of paper towards him and starts to read. Joe squeezes his shoulder, and then follows Nile to the stove to presumably make the blandest chicken soup in existence.

Nicky manages about five minutes listening to Andy and trying to fit what she says into the fractured and disjointed memories that he has, blurred by drugs and exhaustion and dying, over and over again. He sips at the sickly-sweet drink Joe had put down in front of him, and looks over at the photographs.

Just as he goes to turn them over, Booker’s hand shoots out and holds them down. “You don’t want to look at these,” he says quietly. “They’re not- just…don’t.”

Nicky looks up and meets Booker’s gaze. “Haven’t you done enough?” he asks.

The room falls silent. Nicky can see Joe turn away from the stove immediately, worry on his face, but he doesn’t look away from Booker. “You’ve done enough,” he says again. “You do not get to decide whether or not I see these photographs. Not when they are, I suspect, of myself. Not when it is you that put them there.”

Booker flinches. “Nicky, I am so-”

“Sorry?” Nicky finishes for him, his voice quiet. “Maybe you should have thought of that sooner. Before you made the decision to damn the rest of us in your quest for self-flagellation.”

“Nicky,” Booker says. “Please. I just-”

Nicky picks Booker’s hand up off the stack of photos and pushes it away. “I am done talking,” he says as he slides the photos towards himself and turns the first over. He studies it, and then slides it into the folder containing the corresponding medical report. “I have nothing to say to you.”

Booker falls silent. He stays silent, even as Nile brings over bowls of chili and Joe sets broth down in front of Nicky, as Andy works through the papers at almost a feverish pace. Joe presses his shoulder into Nicky’s as he sits down next to him, pushing the photographs away. Nile takes them, and slots them into a folder. “Not whilst we’re eating,” she says, and nobody argues with the tone of her voice.

The chili smells like the best thing Nicky could ever eat. He watches enviously as Joe shovels it down, his spoon trailing through the broth in his bowl as he sips at it. He knows that Joe is right. That their gift brings them back to life but does nothing to stave off muscle loss or the gradual decline of his body, that after eating so little for so long there is no way he could stomach an entire bowl of chili and rice, no matter how much he longs to steal Joe’s bowl and eat the entire thing.

He has no desire to throw up again. Besides, he’s nearly full even after just a bowl of broth, and when Andy hands him a peanut butter sandwich he only manages half of it before he has to hand it off to Joe to finish.

That film of exhaustion is pressing on him even more now, the typed pages of reports blurring in front of him. Andy is saying something, and Nicky digs his thumb into the opposite palm to jolt him awake enough to listen in.

“-here for a few more days,” Andy is saying. “All of us. Copley needs more time to bury our trail, especially with all that we’ve found here, and we need to lie low until we are certain that none of us have a target on our backs. Any more than we usually do.” She pushes one of the paper stacks to the side. “Nobody leaves this site, not until we get the all clear from Copley. Nobody fucks off in the middle of the night for anything. We stick together. Clear?”

“Crystal,” Nile says, giving pointed looks to Joe and then Booker.

Joe rests his hand on Nicky’s thigh. “Understood, boss,” he says. He pushes his empty bowl away, Nile stacking it up with the rest of them, and glances over at Nicky.

It’s an unspoken question, and one that Nicky knows the answer to. “I’m going back to sleep, I think,” he says, pushing his chair back from the table with a screech. A beat later and Joe gets up as well, his hand settling into place in the small of Nicky’s back.

“We’ll keep it quiet,” Nile says, looking up at them with a small smile. “Sleep well, guys. See you in the morning.”

Andy is already starting to leaf through another pile of papers. “Night,” she says, giving them a quick smile before turning back to her work.

Nicky doesn’t wait to see whether Booker says anything. He heads upstairs, Joe a step behind him all the way. He’s asleep almost as soon as his head hits the pillow.

0-o-0-o-0

Nile abandons the work when she starts tripping over every other word in the reports, not just the medical jargon she hasn’t understood from the beginning. The words are blurring in front of her, and she hasn’t brought herself to look at the rest of the photographs ever since bile rose in her throat a few hours ago as she tried to sort them chronologically. Andy is still going, but Nile is pretty sure Andy is going to keep going through all of the reports until she passes out on top of them. As a punishment or some form of penance, for how long it took them to find Nicky.

The light is still on in the room upstairs, rain starting to drum against the boarded up windows. Booker is curled up on the bed closest to the door. There isn’t a bottle in his hands or on the floor beside him, but only because it’s sat next to Andy downstairs and she hadn’t let go of it when he’d tried to take it.

Nicky and Joe remain asleep as Nile creeps into the room and settles on her bed. Joe’s arms are wrapped around Nicky’s waist, his face pressed into the back of his neck. Nicky looks like he’s drowning in the sweater he’s still wearing, which Nile is pretty sure is Joe’s, and there’s a small frown on his face that hasn’t disappeared with sleep.

Joe shifts, and his arm curls tighter around Nicky. Nile pulls out the tattered book from her duffel bag, the one she has read twenty times already, and settles in to keep watch.

It’s barely an hour later when Joe stirs. He raises his head, squinting against the light from Nile’s lamp. “All good?” Nile whispers, and Joe’s gaze focuses in on her.

“Fine,” he rasps. “What- how late is it?”

Nile glances at her watch. “Gone midnight.”

She sees Joe calculating in his head as he glances down at Nicky, sleeping on obliviously. “About four hours total, I think,” Nile offers. “He looks a bit dead to the world.”

She immediately winces at the way Joe’s face falls. “Sorry, poor choice of words.”

“It’s fine,” Joe murmurs. He eases his arm away from around Nicky’s waist, pulling the blanket up to replace it. “I need to go take a piss,” he mutters. “Can you-”

“Yell if he mysteriously disappears?” Nile asks. “Sure. I’ll keep an eye for the two minutes that you’re not in the room.”

The joke doesn’t quite land right, judging by the expression on Joe’s face. “It’ll be fine,” she says, softening slightly. “Go on. He’s exhausted, he’ll just sleep straight through.”

It’s never that simple. Nile hears low voices start up from downstairs, and two minutes stretches into five, into ten as Andy and Joe talk over something downstairs, the voices too low for Nile to make any of it out. Nile keeps half an eye on Nicky over her book. He is still and quiet, until he isn’t.

It starts with a tremor running through him that she almost misses. The small frown deepens, his jaw clenching and unclenching, and then a muffled whimper slips through his teeth.

Nile sets her book down next to her. “Nicky?”

Nicky twists in his sleep, a mutter of Italian into his pillow. “Nicky?” Nile calls again. “You’re dreaming. You’re just dreaming.”

Booker stirs, and then sits up with a groan, rubbing at his eyes. “What’s going on?” he asks, just as Nicky twists and kicks out, his leg thudding into the wall with a dull thump. He looks over. “Oh. Shit. Where’s Joe?”

“Downstairs,” Nile answers, shoving her blanket back. “Nicky? Nicky, you’re just dreaming.” Nicky doesn’t respond, the blankets just twisting around his legs as he struggles in his sleep, sweat beginning to bead on his forehead. “Go get Joe,” Nile says over her shoulder to Booker as he watches. “I’ll try to wake him up.”

“I wouldn’t-”

Nile reaches out and gently grasps Nicky’s shoulder. “Nicky,” she calls softly. “Nicky, wake up.”

Nicky’s eyes fly open.

He’s abruptly gasping for breath, his chest heaving as he bolts upright, eyes darting frantically around the room. Nile grasps his shoulders. “Nicky,” she says. “Nicky, you’re fine. You’re safe. It was just a dream.”

Nicky looks at her. There is something in his face, and Nile just has enough time to think that she might have made a mistake before he lashes out, swinging up at her. Something glints in his hand, but she’s too slow to do anything but try and desperately throw herself back, out of the way. Distantly she hears Booker shout out in alarm, and then something sharp and cold slashes across her neck.

Her hands fly up to her throat. Blood spills out between her fingers. More bubbles up out of her mouth. She’s choking on it, unable to taste anything but iron, and briefly she thinks she can smell the baking desert sand and hear the yells of her Marines as her legs give way beneath her and she falls to the floor.

Nicky lunges after her. Nile tries to get her hands up but there’s no strength left in her arms anymore, nothing left to counter him. She just watches as Nicky, trapped somewhere she can’t see, goes after the visible threat.

Booker barrels into him, wrapping his arms around Nicky and hauling him away. “Nicky!” he shouts, grabbing onto the blade and wrenching it away even as it digs into the meat of his palm. “Nicky, it’s us! Nicolo! Stop!”

He shouts something else, but Nile can’t hear it. She can’t hear anything.

She dies, on the cold concrete floor, and there is nothing.

Everything comes roaring back. Nile gasps for breath, still clutching at her neck even as she feels the skin knit back together. There is a roaring in her ears that slowly begins to quieten as she sits up, her entire body shaking.

The building rattles from the force of Booker being slammed into the wall. Nicky is snarling in his grip, struggling against him with none of the finesse that Nile is so used to seeing from him. He slams his head back into Booker’s and blood starts gushing from Booker’s nose, but he doesn’t let go. “Nicky!” he yells again. “Fucking hell, Nicolo, it’s us! It’s just us!”

Feet pound on the stairs, and then the door is slammed open. Joe appears in the doorway. He freezes for a moment, staring at the room, and then Nile watches as a terrifying expression comes over his face.

“ _Get_ _away from him.”_

“Wait-” Nile calls out, but her voice rasps in her throat and she doubles over, coughs raking through her. She watches from where she is sprawled on the floor as Joe rushes forwards and grabs Booker, tearing his arms away from where they’re wrapped around Nicky and shoving him back. Nicky staggers and slumps against the wall, sliding down until he’s sitting at a heap on the floor and gasping for breath.

The room rattles again as Joe grabs Booker and throws him up against the wall. “How _dare_ you,” he snarls in Booker’s face. “How fucking dare you. What the fuck do you think you are doing? You piece of shit, you-”

“Joe!” Nile shouts. She pulls herself up to sitting, her hands sticky against the blood pooled on the floor as she props herself up. “Let him go. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“He’s already done enough,” Joe snarls. He slams Booker into the wall again, and Booker doesn’t resist. “You piece of shit-”

“Joe!” Andy appears in the doorway, glancing around the room with sharp eyes. “What the fuck is going on here?”

“Nicky had a nightmare,” Nile says before anyone else can get their opinion in. “I woke him up. I don’t think he realised where he was, and he lashed out. Got me in the throat. Booker grabbed him off me and was trying to talk him down, and then Joe turned up and grabbed Booker off Nicky. And now we’re all here.”

Joe drops Booker, who catches himself back up against the wall. He turns to Nicky, movements suddenly frantic and touched with guilt. Nicky is slumped on the floor, still gasping for breath. His gaze turns to Joe as he crouches down next to him. “Nicolo,” Joe says. “Nicolo, my love, breathe for me. Just breathe, Nicolo.”

Nicky looks at him, and then away. His gaze catches on Nile. “You’re okay, Nicky,” Nile says. She tries to wipe some of the blood away from her throat. Nicky follows the movement of her hand, and his face abruptly pales. “Nicky?” Nile asks. She tries to get up, but her hand slips on the blood on the floor and she sits back down with a bump.

Nicky’s face goes white. He stares at Nile like he’s seen a ghost, not looking away even when Joe calls his name, cups his face in his hands. Nile gets up more carefully. “I’m fine, Nicky,” she says as she approaches. “Look, there’s nothing even there anymore. Good as new.”

That was, apparently, the entirely wrong thing to say. Nicky scrambles to his feet, shoving past Joe and then Andy without a word. He staggers through the door and disappears.

Joe is on his feet before Nile can even blink, running after Nicky. Nile follows, Andy and Booker behind her. She gets downstairs just in time to see Nicky fling open the door and stagger outside. He falls to his knees and then tips forwards, only just catching himself with one hand as he retches into the grass.

Joe runs for him, everyone else following. Nicky looks back over his shoulder, hair already plastered to his forehead by the rain. His eyes are wide and panicked as he stares at them. He reaches out and slams the door shut in Joe’s face.

The room is silent. Joe stares at the door in front of him. He hesitantly reaches for the handle and pushes, but the door thumps up against something and doesn’t move. As if someone is sat against it outside, holding it shut.

Joe’s hand falls back to his side. He just stands there, staring at the closed door.

“What the fuck,” Nile breathes. “Are we just going to…leave Nicky out in the rain?”

“If he wanted company, the door wouldn’t be shut,” Joe says, his voice utterly flat. Booker rolls his eyes and mutters something under his breath. Nile only just makes out something about martyrs before it dissolves into indistinct French.

Andy heaves a sigh. “What a fucking day.” She pushes Joe away from the door with a shove to his shoulder, and then slams her hand against the door. “Nicky!” she calls out. “Either come back inside or let Joe come out. Don’t sit out there on your own, you idiot.”

There’s no response. When Andy tests the door, the same heavy weight is still there. “Jesus Christ,” Booker mutters to himself. He shakes his head when Nile looks at him. “Take the man out of the church, can’t take the church out of the man,” he just says.

Andy snorts at that. She slams on the door again. “Nicky! Stop being such a fucking Catholic and open the goddamn door.”

There’s a moment of silence, and then the door creaks open. The room fills with the sound of the rain steadily falling outside. Nile can just see Nicky. He’s leant back up against the wall next to the door now, one hand rubbing over and over at his throat. He doesn’t look at them.

It takes her a second to realise that Joe hasn’t moved. “Joe,” Nile says quietly.

Joe startles slightly, but doesn’t move. “Idiots, the lot of you,” Andy mutters. She shoves Joe towards the door with a neat strike between his shoulder blades. “Go on, stop being a martyr. Go to him.”

Joe stumbles forwards. “He doesn’t-”

“Fucking finish that sentence, I dare you,” Andy says. She shoves him again towards the door. “He’s getting cold.”

Joe gives her one more look, and then slips out of the door. “Nicolo,” Nile hears as he crouches down next to him, one hand extended towards him, and then the door slips shut. The sound of the rain cuts out and leaves silence behind.

Booker lets out a long breath. “Well. That was fucked.”

Andy sighs. “Yeah.” She turns away from the door, running her hand through her hair. “Nothing ever goes our fucking way, does it?”

It’s the type of question that Nile knows isn’t expecting an answer. Andy nods as if someone responded anyway, and then heads for the fireplace and starts stacking kindling up in the grate. “They’ll come in when they come in,” she says over her shoulder, as if she knows without looking that Nile is still watching the closed door. “Bring all the blankets and bedding down here. There’ll be room if we shove this sofa back.”

“We’re sleeping down here?” Nile asks, glancing over at her. Andy has started the fire, and is in the process of pulling the ratted sofa cushions off the sofa and onto the floor. Booker disappears upstairs, his feet heavy on the staircase. “Or you’re building a pillow fort.”

Andy snorts. “You want to sleep up there after all the shit that’s just happened, be my guest.” She shoves the cushions into some sort of haphazard pile on the floor and sits back, pushing her hair back out of her face. “This is easier. Safer.”

All of them within her sight, Nile realises. Within reach.

“We should clean up the blood upstairs,” she hears herself say. “And bring down their stuff.”

“Booker will get it,” Andy just says.

Nile glances over at the door, which remains shut. She sits down, leaning back against the back of the now-stripped sofa. “This is so fucked,” she mutters, staring at the fire as the flames slowly grow and start to lick around the larger logs. “What do we do now?”

“Wait,” Andy says with a shrug. “Keep them safe.”

Nile hums. She glances around her, at the boarded-up windows and the supplies stacked with military precision against one wall. The bare lightbulbs above her head and the concrete floor that feels cold even through her shoes. She thinks of the look on Nicky’s face as he’d woken up, the way he had looked straight through her like he didn’t know who she was. “Has everyone else been here before?” she asks eventually. “Have they seen this place before?”

Andy shakes her head. “This is my safehouse, and a fairly new one. None of them have been here before.”

Nile nods. “Maybe we should move, then. Somewhere less…utilitarian.”

“This is safe,” Andy replies with a frown. “And we need to keep our heads down more than ever right now.” She adds another log to the growing fire. “There isn’t a safehouse as easily defensible within a day of here. We stay until the risk has died down and we can safely move out.”

“Andy.” Nile leans forwards, trying to catch her gaze. “I know I’m new to all this shit, compared to all of you, but I was a Marine. I know trauma when I see it. Nicky didn’t recognise anything when he woke up- when I woke him up. He didn’t know where he was, because he’s never even seen this place before, and he was pretty much dead on his feet when we first got here and probably didn’t even register the room before falling asleep.”

“And?” Andy asks. “This is the best place to defend ourselves. We can worry about anything else after.”

“This isn’t just _anything else_ , Andy.” Nile glances back at the door, still firmly shut. She can just about still hear the rain outside. “Easily defensible is good. But like hell it’s the only thing that matters right now. Nicky was held for _seven months_. That’s a really fucking long time. And unless Joe literally ties himself to Nicky’s side- not even then, maybe, because trauma does fucked-up things to people and you know it, this is probably going to happen again, in some shape or form. We need somewhere familiar. Somewhere better than this place, so that when Nicky wakes up from nightmares again, it doesn’t take him slicing my throat open to realise that he isn’t back there.”

Andy shakes her head. “Our priority right now is to keep those two together, and keep them safe. Keep all of us safe. You don’t understand, Nile. You haven’t lived long enough yet.”

“I’ve died plenty of times already,” Nile points out. “And been through plenty of shit with you.”

“You’re still afraid of dying,” Andy says, her voice quiet. She looks up at Nile from her slouch on the floor. She looks exhausted. “Just a little bit. You still don’t quite know this immortality, not yet. You haven’t lived it yet. And you won’t understand until you do that getting hurt doesn’t matter much anymore. Not compared to getting separated. Being taken away from each other.” She stares at the closed front door. “I have to keep them together. That’s all that matters now.”

“Andy.” Nile waits until Andy looks back at her. “You’re right, I don’t understand that yet,” she says when Andy finally meets her gaze. “I won’t for a while. But maybe it’s better that I don’t, with this. Because I can damn well see what apparently you can’t, and that’s that they need more than just safety right now. They need more than to just be defended.”

Andy is silent. “Do Joe and Nicky have a place nearby?” Nile asks. “Like, anywhere within a day’s travel. Somewhere they actually know, somewhere that’s not…not just a safehouse.”

“Ireland.” Nile jumps, and turns to see Booker coming slowly down the stairs, arms piled high with blankets. Duffel bags on each shoulder snag on the walls, and he tugs them free. “The cottage in County Kilkenny,” he continues, handing most of the blankets off to Andy. “The one we ended up in after all the shit in Derry, on the grounds of that castle. They’ve had that house for at least a century. Get the ferry from Pembroke Dock into Rosslare to avoid Dublin. Shouldn’t take more than a day.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Nile says. “If those two come back in any time soon, we can all get some sleep and then head off in the morning.”

Booker sets the duffel bags down with a heavy thud. “I’ll pack my shit, then,” he says. “They won’t look for me if I’m on my own now.” He nods to himself. “I’ll head east. Mainland Europe, through to Russia maybe. That’ll throw off your trail if anyone is still looking for you.”

“Booker.”

Booker doesn’t look at Andy as he shrugs. “They’re not going to want me to stay. Not after this. Joe was one second away from caving my head in against the wall upstairs. Nicky can’t even fucking look at me.” He shakes his head. “I’ll go.”

“Book,” Andy says, getting to her feet. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“Going to make it an order, boss?” Booker asks, a wry smile curling his lips. “Going to put us all in time out until we say sorry and make up?”

“I will if you’re a dick about it,” Andy retorts. “You won’t be safe on your own. And you’ll do none of this any good if you just up and leave now.”

“Are we ever safe?” Booker asks. He shrugs. “Doesn’t matter to me.”

“Bullshit.”

Booker turns to Nile, one eyebrow raised in an amused expression. “Really?” he asks.

Nile crosses her arms in front of her chest. “Bullshit,” she says again. “Of course it matters. You would have told me to fuck off in that dingy little apartment two months ago if it didn’t. Instead you came with me, even when you knew Joe would probably punch you when he first saw you, and you spent two months searching with us to find him. You think we’re going to buy that you’re happy to just disappear now, when we’ve got Nicky back, but it’s still fucked to all hell? Bullshit.”

Booker just gives her a look. “So we’ll all play happy families, is that it? Just forget everything that happened this past year and move on?”

Nile stares him down. “You remember what I told you in that lab? No man left behind?” She waits until Booker nods. “Yeah, I fucking meant it.”

“Not even me?” Booker asks, wry and self-deprecating.

“Not even you.”

“You’re staying,” Andy says firmly. “Put your bag down before I take it off you.” She gets to her feet and grasps Booker’s shoulder. “You’re still family, you idiot. And the two of us have done a shit job at living for the past couple of centuries. So no, not even you.” She cups the back of his neck. “Time to start living, Book.”

Booker doesn’t reply. Andy presses their foreheads together for a brief moment, and then steps back. “I’m going to get the other idiots in before they melt in the rain,” she says, and she heads outside without another word.

Booker stares down at the floor for a long moment. Slowly, he lets his duffel bag slide off his shoulder and fall to the ground. It lands with a heavy thud on the concrete floor. “You fucked up,” Nile says. “In epic proportions. But we’re all here. We’re all okay.” She shrugs. “There are worse places to start from.”

Booker huffs a laugh. “I don’t know how to fix this.” He looks up at her, that wry smile falling from his face to sink down to the concrete. He looks old. For the first time, Nile sees two centuries etched into the lines of his face. “I didn’t think I would be here to have to.”

Nile breathes out. “I…I don’t know either. But you can start by staying.”

Booker grimaces. “They won’t want me here.”

“That’s not up to you.” Nile glances behind her at the front door, still shut. She can hear the rain still falling down outside. “You know why Joe is so angry? Why Nicky feels guilty? Because they care for you, asshole. Because they consider you family, and they love you. Betrayal doesn’t hurt if you didn’t care enough in the first place. Fuck believing that you’re irredeemable. There’s a family here waiting for you.”

“Easier said than done,” Booker says, but there’s the barest hint of a smile curling his lips.

“Maybe start by helping me clean up,” Nile offers. She glances at him, the dried blood down his shirt from where Nicky headbutted him. “And maybe clean the blood off you before they come back in.”

Booker gives her an unimpressed look. “Same goes to you.”

She’d almost forgotten about the knife in her neck. It feels like hours ago. When she looks down at herself, her shirt is soaked in blood. There’s more crusted on her hands, wedged underneath her fingernails. If Nicky saw her like this, she would probably send him straight back into another panic attack. “Oh, yeah, we should probably get changed.” She pulls her shirt out, trying to see if it is at all salvageable. “Dammit. I liked this shirt.”

0-o-0-o-0

When Nicky comes back inside, he is shivering. The cold rain has soaked his clothes, his shirt sticking to his skin with every step. Joe’s hand is on his back. He hasn’t let go of him ever since he sat down next to him, in the mud, and took his hand. Not saying anything as Nicky breathed out the last vestiges of the nightmare, slowly managed to look out and see the rain instead of fluorescent lights overhead and blood running into a drain beneath his feet, just sitting next to him and reminding him with every breath that he’s no longer there.

The fire has been built up until it is roaring as Andy shuts the door behind them, the room almost sweltering. Nile and Booker are already on their feet. Nile immediately starts towards him, almost throwing a blanket in his face in her haste to try and wrap it around him.

Nicky lets Joe tug it into place. He has more important things to do. “Nile,” he says, reaching out to still her hands. “I am so-”

Nile slaps her hand over his mouth. “Don’t you even dare,” she says, staring Nicky down, her hand gripping tight over his mouth. “I’m fine. And I am sorry. I shouldn’t have woken you up like that when you were obviously having a nightmare. I should have known better than to shake you awake. So, I’m sorry. Nod if you accept my apology.”

Nicky tries to talk, but Nile’s grip is so tight he can’t actually move his lips. “Nod if you accept my apology,” she says again, staring him down.

Nicky nods. And then licks her hand. “I knew that was coming, and it’s still disgusting,” Nile says with a grimace. She pulls her hand back and wipes it on her jeans. She’s obviously changed clothes and washed the blood off, the ends of her hair wet and still dripping down her back.

“Thank you,” Nicky says quietly. Nile relaxes slightly, grinning up at him.

“No worries. Has Andy told you of the plan?”

“Ireland,” Joe says from beside him, his hand a solid warmth on Nicky’s back again, slipped under the blanket draped over him. He nods. “It’s a good idea. We leave in the morning?” He looks past Nile to where Booker is stood by the fire. “All of us?”

Andy nods. “All of us.”

Nicky can feel Joe tense beside him. He puts out a hand blindly, pushing him back slightly. “It isn’t important,” he says quietly, not looking at Booker.

Booker takes the hit, and doesn’t say anything. “Get out of these wet clothes,” Andy says, clapping Nicky’s shoulder as she brushes past him and heads to put another log onto the fire. “We’re all sleeping down here. Booker brought down your bags.”

She gives Nile a meaningful look, and both of them head to the small stove on the other side of the room. It’s not much privacy, but Nicky supposes that it’s the effort that counts.

Joe pulls out some clothes from a duffel bag and passes them over to Nicky, who tugs off his sodden shirt. “Just for the record,” Joe says to Booker as he pulls his own shirt off and takes both of them to hang near the fire, “you had no right. Just because you thought you wouldn’t be there to deal with the consequences of your decision, it doesn’t mean that there weren’t consequences. Ones that you decided for us.”

His movements are jagged and sharp as he tugs on a new shirt and then starts fussing over Nicky. Nicky allows it, if only because he knows what’s underneath, and that Joe hasn’t let himself stop worrying for months. “I know,” Booker says.

“If you know, then you shouldn’t have done it,” Joe snaps as he runs a towel over Nicky’s hair, and then his own. His curls are almost standing up on end now, and Nicky thoughtlessly reaches out to run his fingers through them in a hopeless attempt to train them into some sort of order.

Joe’s breath hitches, and then Nicky finds himself staggering under the weight as Joe wraps his arms around him and buries his head into the crook of his neck. “ _Habibi_ ,” Nicky murmurs, holding him close. Joe doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to. “I know,” Nicky says softly. He presses a kiss into Joe’s untamed hair. “I know, love.” He looks at Booker over Joe’s shoulder. “You were hurting. It doesn’t make what you did any easier for us.”

“I’m aware,” Booker says with a scowl. “I’m capable of enough self-flagellation on my own, I don’t actually need you to add to it.”

Nicky tries not to flinch at that. It wouldn’t do anything but make Joe angry. “I don’t understand,” he says to Booker instead. “Help me understand, Sebastien. We were your family. Were two centuries not enough to earn your trust?”

Booker rocks back on his heels as if reeling from a physical blow. “It- you _are_ my family. That never changed. But I- by the time this became anything more than just drunken thinking, I was too deep in that pit to get out. And it was too late to say anything.”

“It was too late to say anything the moment those men stormed our safehouse, blew you up and dragged Joe and myself into the back of an armoured truck,” Nicky says, unable to help the cold in his voice. “Any time before that would have been fine.”

Booker shakes his head. “You misunderstand. I-” He trails off, blowing out a breath as he runs his hands through his hair. He looks nervous. “Fuck,” he mutters. He turns to them. “Look, I- how I could possibly admit to failing so fucking miserably at…at all of _this_ , when you and Joe are so perfect at this life?”

Nicky stares at him. Even Joe pulls his head away from Nicky’s shoulder enough to stare at Booker. “What the fuck are you talking about?” he asks.

“You know what the fuck I’m talking about,” Booker snaps. He waves a hand at them. “Look at you. Everyone you ever meet knows how utterly in love you are. Still. After a _millennium_. In two centuries, not once have I seen either of you _miss_ anything. You’ve always had each other. What the fuck do I have to compare to that?”

Joe pulls away from Nicky, though his hand stays resting on his back. “You are an idiot,” he says, his voice cold. “Do you know why we don’t have anyone except each other and this family? Precisely because it has been a millennium. The people we grew up with are dust in the ground. Our families are so long gone that some days, I cannot remember my mother’s name. So yes, we don’t _miss_ anything, or anyone. We don’t remember them enough for that.”

“We could have told you this,” Nicky says quietly. “We could have told you all of this, if you had asked. We could have told you that it isn’t easy for us either. That Joe and I have had more fights than we can remember over the centuries.” He looks over at Joe. “That sometimes, even having him beside me isn’t enough in that moment to quell the resurgence of all the horrors I have seen. Or participated in.”

Joe’s hand presses against his back. It’s not quite enough to dispel the stench of rot that he can suddenly smell. He looks down, but there is only bare concrete beneath his feet. Not cobblestones, soaked in blood that splashes up around his boots with every step. Dead bodies strewn throughout the streets, piled so high in places that he can’t do anything but walk over them.

“Nicolo.”

Nicky blinks, and looks up. Joe is standing in front of him now, hands resting on his shoulders. “Nicolo,” he says again, his voice quiet. “Are you with me?”

Nicky breathes out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding, and drops his head down onto Joe’s shoulder. “I’m here.”

He can feel Joe smooth his hand down his back, over and over again. “Enough,” Joe says, his cheek pressing against the top of Nicky’s head. “That’s enough for now.”

Nicky takes a moment and just breathes, until all he can smell is the woodsmoke of the roaring fire and Joe, what he so easily recognises as Joe. “I’m tired,” he murmurs into Joe’s shirt. “I’m just…tired.”

“It’s been literally less than a day since we found you.” Nicky looks up to see Andy approaching, mugs in her hand. She passes one to Joe, and then presses the other into Nicky’s hand. “Sleep first. Give yourself, and all of us, time. We’ve earned it.”

Behind her, mugs also balanced carefully in her hands, Nile nods. “Time off sounds like a great idea for all of us, I think,” she says as she sits down on the mess of cushions and pulls a blanket around her shoulders. She hands a mug to Booker, who sits down and leans up against the wall. It doesn’t escape Nicky’s notice that it’s as far away from them that Booker can get whilst still close enough to get some benefit from the fire, but he’s too tired to think of it right now. Nile sips at her mug with a wince at the heat. “What’s there to do in Ireland?”

Nicky lets Joe tug him over to close to the fire. He sits down, settling back against Joe’s chest and sipping at his tea as he listens to Andy talk about the last time they were in Ireland, in the worst days of the Troubles. She only gets a few minutes into it before she glances over in Nicky’s direction, and abruptly changes topic to the time that she and Joe got so drunk in a village outside Dublin that they fell asleep in a field together, and Nicky nearly stole a helicopter to try and find them.

Joe sets his mug down, and then wraps his arms around Nicky’s waist. Nicky sags back into him. “What time is it?” he murmurs as Joe gently tugs the mug out of his grasp.

“Not your problem to worry about,” Joe replies. “Go to sleep, love. I’ll be here.”

There’s something in his chest that doesn’t want him to sleep. Sleeping is dangerous. He doesn’t know what will be changed when he wakes up, whether he will be in a different room, if he will wake up to more needles and scalpels, or the bone-deep exhaustion that accompanies another death that he doesn’t even remember.

Joe’s arms tighten around him. “Go to sleep,” he murmurs again.

Nicky shuts his eyes, but he opens them only a few moments later. “Nicolo?” Joe asks.

Nile glances up from where she’s sat, still nursing her mug of tea. “Do you want some music on?” she asks Nicky. “I finally got some speakers that I need to try out, and Janelle Monae put out a new album I haven’t heard yet.” She cracks a grin. “Bet they never played anything like that where you were.”

Nicky frowns. His movements feel sluggish, weighed down with exhaustion. “Who is Janelle Monae?” he asks.

“Oh, _no_ ,” Nile says in answer. “Hang on. I am going to educate you all on modern music.” She digs around in her bag and pulls out a small speaker set and her phone. “Do you at least know who Beyoncé is?”

“Oh, I know her,” Andy says with a nod. “She’s that one who is married to that weird rapper who went on about the American president, the orange one. The president, not the rapper.”

Nile looks like she is about to combust. “No! Oh my god, _no_. No. _That_ is someone you need to forget immediately, they aren’t important. Beyoncé…” She trails off, staring up at the ceiling as if she is trying to find the words up there. “Beyoncé is _queen_.”

Joe nods. “Is she the one who married that English prince, then?”

Nicky hums, settling back in Joe’s arms as Nile sputters. “I saw a bit of that on the television. She had a lovely wedding dress.”

“That is Meghan Markle, who is also great, but we’re getting off topic.” Nile scrolls feverishly through her phone. “It’s worse than I thought,” she mutters to herself. “So much worse than I thought. Right. We’re starting with this song. Pay attention. There will be a quiz in the car tomorrow.”

She sets her phone down. Music starts playing, loud and bright and nothing Nicky has heard in months. He shouldn’t be able to sleep to it at all, but his eyes slip shut without his permission, his head falling back onto Joe’s shoulder. Before the song is over, he’s asleep.

0-o-0-o-0

The car ride is…not excruciating.

It’s probably the best that Booker can hope for. He and Andy take turns driving down south, crossing the Severn bridge into Wales under pouring rain. Nile navigates from the back, leant forwards so the charger cord can reach her phone, and she continues her supposed education from last night. The bright, obnoxious music blaring from her speakers makes Booker wince after a few hours, but Nicky fell asleep after one song last night and didn’t wake up until Joe shook him awake this morning, so he’ll endure it. It’s the very least that he can probably do.

Nile is slowly moving through music genres, reaching something called grime as they near the coast of Wales and the waiting ferry. This one makes both Nicky and Joe wince. “I liked the Gaga songs,” Joe offers, in an apparent attempt to divert the music to something less…this. “She was good.”

“She always has the best outfits at the Met Gala,” Nile replies. “Hang on, let me google some.”

Booker almost regrets not sitting in the back of the car, despite it containing two people who currently want nothing to do with him, as Nile somehow manages to pull both Nicky and Joe into an intense discussion about fashion with the help of google images, and how terrible most recreations of renaissance fashion is. “God, there are so many people who would die for the information in your heads,” Nile says as Andy pulls the car onto the waiting ferry. “Historians would literally fight each other for the chance to talk to you. It would be carnage.”

Nicky huffs a laugh as he rolls down the window. The smell of brine drifts in on the breeze coming off the sea, and Booker sees Nicky shiver slightly at the chill, though he tilts his head towards the window anyway. Almost immediately, Joe is passing a jacket that was down by his feet over Nile’s head to Nicky, who slings it around his shoulders. “What was that film we saw a few years ago?” he asks Joe, not looking away from the open sea outside his window. “The one about William Wallace? The blue woad was a century too late, and the tartan half a century too early. It was ridiculous.”

Andy snorts from the front. “None of that film was accurate. Wallace was never called or called himself Braveheart at all when he was alive. And he did not look like that at all.”

They keep this line of entertainment going for long enough that by the time Nile has run out of films to bring up for them to pick apart, Andy is driving off the ferry and they’re into Ireland. Nicky is either conveniently asleep or pretending to be as they go through customs, wrapped up enough in Joe’s jacket that the customs officials can’t notice how thin he is underneath.

“It’s only about an hour from here,” Joe says as they drive out of the harbour. His voice is quiet, which means that Nicky is actually asleep, or nearly there. “Andy, do you remember the way?”

“You’ll have to direct me once we get off the motorway, but until then I’m good,” Andy says, glancing up at them in the rearview mirror. “He asleep?”

“Almost,” Joe replies. “Though if your shitty driving keeps up, he won’t be for long.”

“It’s not my fault I learned to drive in a warzone,” Andy says as she swoops around a corner. Booker winces, and grabs at the door handle before he falls across the car. There’s a thud and then a muffled groan from the back, the sound of someone’s head connecting with glass. Booker twists to see Nicky cracking his eyes open and glaring vaguely in Andy’s direction.

“I do not need a concussion on top of everything else,” he mutters, closing his eyes and resting his head back against the window. “Please drive better.”

Nile laughs. “You heard the man, Andy. Maybe you should let the only person with an actual, non-forged driving licence take over.”

They slowly leave the dirt grey of the harbour behind as they drive inland. Nile stares out of the front window, leaning on the back of Booker’s seat as she watches the countryside slowly unfurl in front of them. “It’s so green,” she says, her eyes wide and her phone forgotten, dangling in her hand.

“It rains a lot,” Andy says over her shoulder. “We’re just on the tail end of summer here. It’ll be a while yet before the trees are bare.”

Her driving has smoothed out, and when Booker glances behind him he can see Nicky is fast asleep against the window. Joe is watching him, one arm stretched over the back of the seats so his hand is brushing against Nicky’s shoulder. Booker doesn’t think he’s seen Joe step out of arm’s reach of Nicky ever since last night. He’s watched them do that strange tangled dance of Joe-and-Nicky before, after missions gone wrong, but never quite as intense as this.

He knows that his broken nose from last night healed within seconds, but he can almost still feel it. That dull ache spreading out across his face, making him want to press his head into his hands until he can see stars. His hip flask is heavy in his pocket, but he can imagine the disapproving look Nile will give him as soon as she sees it, and he leaves it there.

Andy turns off the motorway and the roads abruptly narrow, twisting and winding past field upon field, the tangled hedges dwarfing their car as they rise above them. Joe shifts, watching the road ahead of them even as his hand still brushes against Nicky’s shoulder. “Remember to watch out for-”

“Oh, shit!”

Andy stamps on the brakes. The car skids to a stop in the middle of the road as a pack of hounds suddenly spill out from a nearby gate, baying and howling as they run around the car. A low thundering and then horses follow, steam rising off them as they clatter out onto the road, snorting and prancing across the tarmac. The horses are huge, their legs and chests covered in mud and their shoes ringing out on the road as more and more spill out from the field.

“What the fuck,” Nile breathes.

Andy laughs. “Oh, of course,” she says with a grin. She twists to look back at Joe, and Nicky, who is now awake and has rolled down one of the windows enough to reach out and scratch the head of one of the hounds as they stand at the door with their tongue lolling. “We’ll have to go out with them.”

Joe snorts. “You can. I’ll watch from a distance, thank you.”

“I’m the only mortal one in this car, and I’m the one who wants to go out hedge-hopping?” Andy laughs again. “Chickens.”

A rider in a red coat tips his hat at them, and then blows on a horn. The hounds start baying again, and follow the rider in a stream of tan and white, weaving in and around the horses’ legs as they begin to move off down the road away from them. The hound at the car window gives Nicky’s hand one more lick, and then runs off after the rest of the pack.

Booker finds a small smile on his face as he watches them disappear. “That’s a lot of dogs,” Nile remarks as Andy starts the car again. “A whole lot of dogs.”

“Hounds,” Nicky corrects. He glances over at Joe. “I wonder if Brian is still hunt master, or if he handed it off to his son?”

“It has been a few years,” Joe says, his hand easily finding Nicky’s shoulder again. “But they would have had to tie Brian down to keep him off his horses, so I’m sure he’s still around. We’ll have to go over whilst we’re here. Maybe next week? Settle in a bit before we let Andy loose on the countryside.”

Nicky laughs at that, and leans his head back against the window. The roads grow narrower and narrower, and then Joe is leaning forwards and pointing them through a large stone archway, up a drive lined with chestnut trees that are probably older than Booker is. He can just see the castle turrets over the woods, can see Nile staring at it as she leans forwards between the front seats, but they turn off the drive long before they reach the castle. Even Andy slows down for the rutted gravel track, somehow hitting every pothole in existence on the way down.

Nile whistles low as they round the corner and the house comes into view. It’s exactly as Booker remembers it, old stone with ivy crawling up one wall, the lines of gnarled apple trees in the little orchard that was here before Nicky and Joe ever knew about this house. The last time he had been here, after months trying to defuse bombs throughout Belfast, and watching civilians get blown up anyway when they were too late, this place had been a welcome refuge. Fires and card games in the evening, the radio turned off, and days spent riding out across the fields until all thoughts of bombs were swept away by the rush of wind and the thundering of hooves.

“That’s not a cottage,” Nile remarks as Andy pulls up in front of the house, tires crunching on the gravel. “That’s, like, three cottages squished together.”

“It was a farmhouse,” Nicky says, staring up at the house with longing in his face. Booker wonders if he is remembering the same weeks that he is, the safety and peace that they managed to eke out for a few precious moments before it was back to the long, dark slog of the fight. “Joe and I found it a couple centuries ago. It is good to be back here.”

“Give me a tour,” Nile says, reaching over Nicky to open the car door and all but shoving him out. “Come on, Nicky, I want to explore. Are there any apples on those trees? Are they any good? I remember reading something about how farmers have to be really careful about cross-pollination or else the flavours are completely off.”

Nicky lets Nile shepherd him out of the car and pulls him towards the house with a smile over his shoulder to Joe. Booker heads for the trunk of the car and starts pulling out bags as Joe hesitates, obviously torn between sticking to Nicky’s side and giving him a little bit of space.

Andy comes to stand beside Joe, watching Nicky laugh as Nile tows him into the house. “He’s doing well,” she says to him in a low voice, and Booker ducks behind the open boot just in case he’s not meant to be hearing this. “Better than I expected, actually.”

“What was last night, then?” Joe asks, his voice ragged. He clears his throat. “No, I know what you mean. He’s surprisingly…stable, for seven months.”

“Has he told you what happened?” Andy asks.

“Nothing beyond the broad strokes,” Joe murmurs. He sighs in response to something Andy does that Booker can’t see with his head buried in the trunk. “I know. I know, boss. But my heart is stubborn, even in this. He will tell me when he tells me, and not before.”

“Just be careful,” Andy says. “Now that we’re somewhere safe, now that we’re somewhere he recognises as really safe for him, it might…” She sighs. “It might get worse before it gets better. You know how these things go.”

“I remember Moscow,” Joe murmurs. He heaves a sigh. “I know, Andy. Judging by our shitty luck, it’s definitely going to get worse before it gets better. But we can stay here for as long as we need to for Nicolo.” There’s a rustle, and Booker can picture Joe running one hand over his face in that way he does when he’s exhausted but doesn’t want to show it. “He’s so thin, Andy,” he murmurs, his voice so quiet Booker can barely hear him. “I just…seven months. It was seven months without him, and I spent almost every moment of it imagining where he was, whether he knew how hard I was fighting to try and get to him. And I can only imagine what they were doing to him for all those months.”

“You’ll keep imaging until you ask him,” Andy points out. “It’ll only get worse.”

“He will tell me when he tells me,” Joe replies, his voice firm. “I trust him.”

Andy sighs. “Go get him, then, before Nile gets first pick of the bedrooms and I end up with the one fireplace that has a blocked flue. I don’t care what you and Nicky get up to at night, if I’m cold I will come into your bed for the body heat.”

Booker hears Joe laugh, and then footsteps as he heads towards the house.

“You can stop pretending that you’re not eavesdropping, now.”

Booker stands up and shuts the trunk of the car, slinging the bags over one shoulder. “Worse before it gets better, then?” he asks.

“Probably,” Andy says with a nod. “You know how these things go as well.”

Booker snorts. “Like any advice I have would help. Only thing I can do is drink all the booze in there before Nicky gets it into his head to try my shitty coping methods.”

Andy doesn’t smile at that. “Book,” she says, her voice low.

Booker resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Here we go,” he mutters. He turns to face her. “Come on, then. I’ve had my lectures from Nicky and my angry yelling from Joe, and I’ve had plenty of disappointed looks from Nile the past two months. What’s your poison?”

Andy takes one of the bags off his shoulder. “I knew something was wrong.”

That wasn’t what Booker was expecting. “Of course I did,” Andy continues. “We’ve spent too many nights getting blindingly drunk together for me to not recognise the same thing I knew had hollowed out my chest.” She sighs. “I just…I forgot how young you are.”

“I’ve been alive for over two centuries,” Booker remarks.

Andy arches a brow. “And I’ve been alive for hundreds of them. I assumed you knew what the rest of us have learned. That there wasn’t a way out. That you _knew,_ no matter how much you tried to seek it out, you couldn’t die. And that you wouldn’t ever get desperate enough to seek something that you can’t have.” Her gaze doesn’t drop away from Booker’s face, but she looks old, old and so very tired. “I failed you, Book. I knew something was wrong, and I did nothing.”

Booker’s mouth twists. “Other way round, boss.”

“Yeah, well we both fucked up,” Andy says succinctly.

“It should have been me.” Booker looks away first, staring down at the gravel. “Not Nicky. Not Joe.” He snorts, not needing to look up to know what Andy’s expression is. “I know. Somewhat too late for wishes now.”

“Go and get yourself imprisoned and tortured, and we’ll see if that fixes anything.” Andy grips his chin and forces his gaze up to meet hers. “Go inside. Stay. Everything else can be salvaged, if you try.”

“If they let me,” Booker mutters.

“You’re here, aren’t you?” Andy just asks in reply, and then she heads for the house, bag slung easily over one shoulder. Mortality has done nothing to take away the easy confidence he can still see in her. If anything, she looks good. Better than he thinks he can ever remember her looking.

A few months ago, if he had cut himself and watched it bleed and bleed and never heal, he thinks he might have thrown himself off the nearest bridge he could find. Now, as he watches Andy walk inside, he’s not so sure.

The wind picks up, stirring the leaves still clinging to the apple trees and slipping under the collar of his jacket. Booker shrugs the bag higher up on his shoulder, and follows Andy inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Nile:** Oh my god, I'm surrounded by boomers.
> 
>  **Joe:** What's a boomer?
> 
>  **Nile:** *yeets herself out of the car in despair*
> 
> Nile is the only one of the group with the one brain cell they all share (and the only one on the outside enough of all the shit going on to be able to see a little more objectively). I love writing her. I headcanon that Nicky probably wasn't involved in the massacre of Jerusalem during the First Crusades, but that he was there, and he still remembers it. Andy is absolutely someone who would love going out with the hunt, because she is definitely adrenaline-loving enough to throw herself on a horse and try to jump hedges bigger than the horse itself. Hunting in Ireland has a reputation for being completely mad, which Andy would love.
> 
> As always, kudos and comments are much loved!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Chapter content warnings:** getting drunk as a poor coping mechanism and the resulting hangover, mentions of nightmares, calmer discussions than previously of Booker's mental state (he was hella depressed, y'all).

Joe wakes, and the bed beside him is cold.

He sits up before he’s even fully awake. The fire has died down in the hearth, embers barely lighting the room, but it’s enough to see that Nicky isn’t here.

Joe forces himself to take a breath. Maybe he’s just gone to get some water. Or some more wood for the fire. Maybe he’ll just be back in a few minutes.

The bed beside him is cold. Nicky’s phone is there on the side table, and when Joe slides his hand underneath the pillow, the cold metal of Nicky’s preferred handgun is nowhere to be found.

“Fuck,” Joe breathes. He can feel his heart start to race in his chest, hear the rush in his ears. Nicky is gone. Nicky is gone.

Nicky is gone.

He’s outside in the hallway, the blood rushing in his ears. “Nicolo?”

There are no lights on downstairs. The front door is still securely locked. Their car is where it has stayed for the past day, ever since they arrived. The plates from dinner are still stacked next to the sink, because none of them can be bothered to do the washing up, and Joe has more important things to concern him.

“Nicolo? Nicolo, where are you?”

He’s not here. He’s not anywhere downstairs. Joe turns back to the stairs, nearly stumbling up them in his haste. Maybe he’s talking to Andy, or Nile. But their doors are shut, and there is no light coming from underneath them. The bathroom is dark and empty. He checks their own room again, but it’s still empty.

He’s not here.

Joe runs downstairs again. “Nicolo!”

A light comes on from upstairs, and then Booker appears on the stairs, gun in hand as he scans the room. “What’s going on?”

Joe can’t catch his breath. He looks around the room again, as if Nicky will suddenly just appear if he searches hard enough. “Nicky,” he gets out. “He’s- I can’t-”

Booker just holsters his gun. “You can’t find him?” he asks, coming down the last few steps until he’s only a few feet from Joe. Joe nods, and Booker sighs. “Well, he hasn’t been taken or we all would have woken up to the carnage. Maybe he’s just gone for a walk. He’s his own man. You’ve looked all around the house?”

Joe nods. “He’s not- the bed was cold.” He swallows. “His gun is gone.”

Something dark passes across Booker’s face. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, we’ll find him. We’ll go out and have a look around the garden and the orchard. I’ll grab some torches. He won’t have gone far, Joe, he wouldn’t have gone far at all.”

Booker’s voice is low and steady, and there’s something in it that Joe can’t quite pick out but makes him uneasy anyway. Booker opens a few cupboards, curses under his breath at something Joe can’t see, and then pulls out two torches. “Here,” he says. “Let’s go check outside.”

Joe feels like he is shaking out of his skin as he steps outside, and it’s not because of the cold. Booker is close behind him, and shines his torch out across the gravel drive. “I’m going to text Andy and Nile, just in case,” he says. “Not that we’ll need them. He probably just needed some fresh air, and we’ll find him in a moment.”

The cold air burns its way down Joe’s throat. He briefly wishes that he’d brought his jacket, and then realises that if he’s feeling the cold, Nicky, who may have been out here for hours, must be freezing. “Nicolo!” he calls out into the darkness. “Nicolo, are you here?”

A light comes on in one of the upstairs windows. “He’s here somewhere,” Joe mutters, the torch beam sweeping across the fields until it is swallowed up by the darkness. “He has to be.”

Booker’s hand grips his shoulder, and he can’t find it within himself to shrug it off. “He wouldn’t have gone far,” Booker says. “He would never go far from you.”

“Let’s try the orchard,” Joe gets out, swallowing around the heavy weight wrapped around his throat. “He spent a lot of time in the orchard when we were here last.”

In the thin beams of the torches, the apple trees loom up at them out of the darkness, gnarled branches twisting out towards them. Joe scans from tree to tree, his heart thumping louder and louder in his chest as each one just has windfall apples scattered around the roots. “Nicolo!” he calls again.

Booker’s torch scans across the field, and then snaps back. “Is that…?”

Joe follows the beam of light, and his heart leaps up into his throat as he sees the slumped silhouette leant up against the trunk of a tree. “Nicolo!”

Andy’s warning from when they arrived rings in his ears as he jumps the low drystone wall and rushes across the orchard, slipping on wet grass and rotting apples. Nicky had seemed fine, this past day. Subdued, but still laughing with Nile when she joked around, talking philosophy with Andy, letting Joe spend every moment that he wishes to by his side.

Joe curses himself. He should have noticed there was something underneath. Should have remembered that his Nicky has such a habit of trying to pretend that everything is fine, that nobody has to worry about him. Should have woken up when Nicky slipped out of bed, and not slept on unaware like an idiot.

Nicky is slumped up against one of the apple trees. There is a glint in the torchlight, and Joe is near frantic at the sight of it until he realises that it is a whiskey bottle, and not the handgun he can now see tucked into the back of his jeans. “Nicolo,” he breathes, dropping to his knees beside him. “Nicolo, my love, what are you doing out here?”

Nicky turns towards him. His movements are sluggish, but Joe can’t tell if it’s from the cold or the alcohol that he can smell on his breath. “Oh,” he says quietly. “You didn’t have to come out here. I’ll come in soon.”

“I would like it if you came in _now_ , my love,” Joe says. He presses one hand to Nicky’s forehead, moving it to cup his cheek. “You are freezing.”

Nicky shrugs. “I’m fine.”

There’s a scoff from behind him, and then a bundle of cloth is pressed into Joe’s hands. Joe looks down to see Booker’s jacket. “Put it on,” Booker says, his voice rasping as he crouches down beside Joe. “Nicholas. What are you doing.”

Nicky snorts. “Isn’t it obvious?” He rolls the bottle between his hands. It’s almost empty.

With one swift movement, Booker wrenches the bottle out of Nicky’s hands. “Don’t you fucking dare,” he snarls. He upends the bottle, pouring the rest of it out onto the grass before Nicky can even try to snatch it back. “Do you feel better, after drinking this?” Booker asks, tossing the now empty bottle behind him. “Do you think going down that road is going to help? Because it might, for a second. And then it just makes everything worse.”

“You do it.” Nicky shrugs. His words are slurred slightly, though whether from the cold or the alcohol Joe can’t tell, and Joe tucks Booker’s jacket around his shoulders as best he can. “I thought I would try it for once.”

“It’s a useless way to try and cope, and we all know it,” Booker snaps. “I will go in that house and pour out every single bottle of alcohol before I let you do this.”

“Fuck you,” Nicky spits. He is shaking, and Joe tries to tuck the jacket more firmly around him. Nicky clumsily pushes his hands away. “Fuck you,” he says again to Booker. “You- you’re the reason I’m here.”

“Hate me, if you like,” Booker just replies. “That’s fine. Ask me to leave in the morning, when you’re sober, if you want me gone. But don’t do this to yourself in hopes of an easy way out. There isn’t one, especially not at the bottom of a bottle. And do not, for the love of whatever God you believe in, shut him out.” He looks up at Joe. “He is the best thing in your life. What you have is a fucking miracle, and I gave up believing in a higher power long ago. Don’t you dare shut him out.”

Nicky is shaking. Joe can’t look away from Booker, who meets his gaze easily. “I’ll head off the others before a full search party is mounted,” he says. “If you’re not inside in about twenty minutes, I’ll send Nile or Andy out with some blankets or something.” He gets to his feet, picks up the empty whiskey bottle, and then follows the light of his beam back inside.

Joe sets his torch down. “Nicolo,” he says softly. “Nicolo, look at me.”

Nicky’s gaze turns to his. There’s something that passes across his face too quickly for Joe to catch, and then he looks away again, into the darkness. “Just go back inside,” he says quietly. “I’ll come in soon.” He glances at Joe again, just for a moment. “You must be cold.”

“How long have you been out here?” Joe asks instead of answering Nicky. If the chill of the night is starting to seep beneath his skin, it must already be firmly embedded in Nicky’s bones. “You’re freezing, love.”

Nicky shrugs. “Don’t know.” He reaches for the bottle, before seemingly realising that it’s gone. His hands fall to his lap. Joe takes them, cupping Nicky’s fingers in his hands and blowing on them in an attempt to get some warmth back to him. “Stop it,” Nicky says softly, pulling his hands away. “I’m fine.”

“Nicolo.” Joe moves closer until he’s pressed against Nicky’s side. “Talk to me, love. Please. I can’t- I can’t tell what’s wrong. I need you to tell me something.”

Nicky doesn’t say anything. “Can I stay out here with you?” Joe asks, trying to keep his voice steady. He desperately wants to reach out and take Nicky’s hands, hold onto him in some way that reassures the frantic heartbeat still pulsing in his ears, but he keeps his hands to himself. “We don’t have to talk. I just…I was worried, when I woke up and you weren’t there.”

Nicky’s breath hitches. He bows his head, his hands clasped together in his lap. He’s shaking still, shivering in the cold, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “ _Benedic mihi, Pater_ ,” he murmurs, almost too quiet for Joe to hear. “ _Quia peccav_.”

Bless me, father, for I have sinned.

Joe breathes out to try and contain the rising worry climbing his throat. “Oh, my Nicolo,” he says softly. “What do you think you must do penance for?”

Nicky’s breath hitches again, and Joe knows that he is right. “Look at me,” he says softly. “Nicolo, look at me.” He waits until Nicky’s gaze slowly drags up to him, and then reaches out to cup his cheek. “If you believe that you require forgiveness for something, then you have it. I forgive you. Now, can we please go inside?”

Nicky leans into his touch for a moment before pulling away. “You don’t know what I did,” he murmurs.

“Whatever it was, it brought you back to me,” Joe says. “How could I be anything but eternally grateful?” Nicky’s gaze drops, his breath shuddering in his chest, and Joe feels like someone is reaching into his own chest and pulling his heart out between his ribs. “Will you tell me?” he asks quietly.

Nicky hesitates, his eyes flicking up to Joe and then away again, and Joe reads a hundred things in that small motion. He moves to sit beside Nicky, leaning up against him but looking out at the silhouettes of apple trees in the darkness. Nicky shivers against him, and then reaches over and threads his fingers with Joe’s.

“It wasn’t…it wasn’t malicious, at first,” he says quietly. “I was a specimen to them. A valuable one, and they treated me…well, for what they were doing.” He pauses for a moment. “And then I kept fighting them. Every time they moved me, I fought back. They chained me down, I fought back. They killed me, and I fought back.”

Joe smooths his thumb across the back of Nicky’s knuckles. “Of course you did, my love,” he murmurs.

It appears to be entirely the wrong thing to say. Nicky almost doubles over with the force of the sob that rattles his body. “I was so _tired_ ,” he gets out, his voice shaking. “I- I was so, so tired. They drugged me, and moved me again and again, until I couldn’t- I couldn’t remember anything. It was all a blur. And I just…” He trails off, slumping over against Joe. He’s shivering so hard now that Joe can feel it against him, shudders running through his body with each breath. “I just _stopped_.”

Nicky is sobbing now, biting his lip so hard to try and keep quiet that Joe can see blood slowly trickling down his chin. “Oh, my love,” Joe murmurs. He puts one arm around Nicky’s shoulders and pulls him close. “I don’t quite understand,” he admits. “Can you explain it to me?”

Nicky presses his head into Joe’s shoulder. “I stopped _fighting_ ,” he gets out. “I- I stopped trying to escape, I stopped trying to get back to you. I just…stopped.” His breath hitches, and a sob slips past his lips despite how hard he tries to hold it back. “I let them do whatever they wanted, Joe. Everything was blurring together and I was so tired, and I had nothing left to fight them with. I knew you were coming, I _knew_ , but I just…I didn’t try to get back to you. I just stopped.”

“Oh, my Nicolo,” Joe murmurs. He presses a kiss to the top of his head. “Don’t cry, my love, please don’t cry. It’s okay.”

“I’m sorry,” Nicky whispers into his shoulder. “I’m sorry, I tried to hold on, I did. I just…I couldn’t.”

Joe shushes him. “Listen carefully, Nicolo,” he says, gripping him a little tighter. “Just listen carefully to me. I don’t care.”

“You should.”

“Ah, since when have you been able to control how I feel?” Joe asks, shaking Nicky slightly. “My love, I don’t care. I don’t care about anything that you did or didn’t do in these past months, not when it ended with you back here, by my side. If you had fought harder against them, they may have done even worse to you. They may have moved you again, or buried you so deep that it took us years to find you. So, I cannot find it within myself to care. Not when you are here.”

“I should have-”

“Done whatever was necessary,” Joe finishes for him. He presses another kiss to Nicky’s temple. “Whatever it was, even if it was doing nothing. I am a selfish man when it comes to my heart, and my entire heart is you. So no, I cannot bring myself to care.”

“You are infuriatingly sincere sometimes,” Nicky mutters, the words slurring slightly.

“An art form I have perfected over the centuries,” Joe agrees. He rests his cheek against the top of Nicky’s head. “How much do you remember of when we found you?” he asks after a few moments.

Nicky shrugs. “Bits and pieces. Most of it was a blur until that safehouse.”

Joe hums. “Then I suppose you do not remember what happened when Booker finally undid the handcuffs?” Nicky shakes his head slightly, and Joe hums again. “Well, then, let me remind you. You fell to the floor, and for a moment I thought you might have passed out. And then you elbowed Andy in the throat hard enough to drop her, threw me away and ran straight for the open door. Nile tackled you in the doorway.” He huffs a small laugh. “You bit her. You were so drugged and starved that you believed you had hallucinated us, that in that moment that I was only in your head, and you bit her in your fight to escape. So no, I do not believe you ever, at any moment, truly gave up. I do not think you have it in you.”

Nicky is silent for a long moment. “I bit her?” he asks eventually.

Joe nods. “If we could scar, I am sure she would have. She had to knock both of you down to the floor to stop you fleeing.” He breathes in and out for a few moments, against the weight of that memory, Nicky hanging from the ceiling, unable to believe that they had come for him and it wasn’t his own mind desperately hallucinating. “Do you believe that this is real, my love?” he asks quietly.

Nicky is silent for a long moment. “I really, really want to,” he says eventually.

Joe’s heart cracks silently in his chest. “Well, you are also quite drunk,” he points out, because he doesn’t know what to say to reassure Nicky that this isn’t all a figment of his imagination except for bundling him up in his arms and holding him close enough that Nicky just somehow realises it. “Maybe we should go inside now? You are freezing, my love, even if you do not feel it with all the whiskey in your veins.”

Nicky turns to him. “Are you cold?” he asks. Joe can’t suppress the shiver that runs through him, and Nicky tries to shrug off the jacket tucked around him. “Take it,” he says, his words slurring slightly. “You’re cold.”

“How about we both go inside, where there are warm fires and blankets, and you can sleep off the whiskey?” Joe asks. The whiskey is obviously starting to come into full effect now. Nicky has always been a worried drunk on whiskey. “And then neither of us will be cold.”

Nicky leans into his side. “How far away is the house?” he mutters.

“Oh, only about fifty metres and a drystone wall are in our way,” Joe says. He presses a kiss to Nicky’s temple, and tries to remember exactly how much whiskey had been left in the bottle before Booker had poured it out. “Shouldn’t take us more than…about ten minutes? I can probably pick you up and carry you, but the wall might be a bit of a problem.”

Nicky snorts a laugh, and Joe thinks it might be the most beautiful sound he has heard for a long time. “I think there is enough feeling left in my legs to attempt to clamber over a wall.”

“Well, then,” Joe says. He hauls himself up to his feet and holds out one hand. “Shall we, my love?”

Nicky takes his hand, lets Joe pull him to his feet and take his weight when he stumbles. Joe just holds him close for a moment, resting his head on Nicky’s shoulder and just breathing him in. Nicky grips his shirt and holds him back, and the world rights itself a little more.

0-o-0-o-0

The buzzing of her phone wakes her up. Nile flails in the darkness for a moment, squinting against the sudden brightness as she grabs her phone and stares at the screen.

_Nicky isn’t in the house. Joe and I are looking outside. Don’t form a search party, we’re fine._

“Well, fuck.”

Nile pushes her duvet back and winces at the cold as she shoves her feet into the boots ready by the side of her bed. She fumbles for the light switch. There are noises from outside, and a moment of listening reveals it to be Joe and Booker, calling Nicky’s name out into the darkness.

She’s struggling her coat on as she runs downstairs, Andy emerging from her room behind her, when the front door opens and Booker comes back inside. He glances up and sees her on the stairs, but says nothing. Nile watches as he stalks into the kitchen, and she can hear the sound of cabinets being slammed open.

“What’s going on?” Andy says as she pushes past Nile and heads downstairs. Nile follows, glancing at the front door before leaving it and following Andy and Booker into the kitchen.

Booker pulls his head out of one of the cabinets. He has a bottle of vodka clenched in one hand, and as she watches, he unscrews the top and upends it over the sink. There’s an empty bottle of what looks like whiskey already sitting on the side. “Find all the other alcohol stashed around this place,” he gets out. “All of it. We’re pouring it away before Nicholas does anything even more _stupid_.”

Andy nods. “He’s drunk, then.”

Booker nods sharply. “Fucking idiot,” he mutters as the vodka drains away down the sink. “He should know better. He should know so much better than this.”

Andy heads to another cupboard and pulls it open. “He does,” she says. “Normally. It’s been tough.”

“Worse before it gets better,” Booker mutters, glancing up at her. “He took his gun, boss.”

Andy stills for a moment. “We’re nowhere near that, Book,” she says eventually. She pulls out a bottle and sets it down next to the sink. “Hide the wine, don’t pour it away. There are some good vintages here, and you know this isn’t going to last. He might be pissed off later.”

“I’ll do it,” Nile offers, before Booker can throw a grenade into the little cupboard under the stairs where a couple crates of wine are stored. He seems in that sort of frantic mood. “I’ll stash them under my bed for now.”

“He can be pissed off at me all he likes,” she hears Booker say as she goes to find the key to the cupboard door. “He can hate me, if he so wishes. I am _not_ letting him go down this road.”

Andy’s hand grasps Booker’s shoulder. “Book,” she says softly. “He’s going to be okay.”

Booker just upends another bottle over the sink and watches it drain away. “He fucking better be.”

Nile hefts the crate of wine upstairs and shoves it under her bed. As she comes back downstairs, the front door opens. “There we go,” Nile hears Joe say. “Oh, my love, you really are three sheets to the wind, aren’t you?”

They stumble in over the threshold. Joe has his arm wrapped around Nicky’s waist, Nicky’s arm pulled up over his shoulder to steady him. Nicky is wearing a jacket that Nile immediately recognises as Booker’s, and he looks up to see her, swaying slightly where he stands. He looks absolutely wrecked. His eyes are red-rimmed, he’s leaning heavily on Joe and even from the stairs, Nile can see him shivering. He still looks so thin, cheeks sunken even with all the food Joe has started pressing on him whenever he can.

“You look like shit,” she blurts out.

To her surprise, Nicky laughs. It’s a hoarse sound, and falls a little flat as he sways again and Joe props him up, but he still laughs. “I know,” he says. “I think I am very tired and very drunk.”

“The empty bottle of whiskey would agree with you, love,” Joe remarks. “Come on, now. Let’s get you back into bed so you can sleep it off. It will look better in the morning.”

Nicky huffs a laugh at that. “Of course,” he says, and Nile can tell that he doesn’t believe a word of it.

“Hang on a second,” she says, and then darts into the kitchen. Booker is hovering just inside the doorway, and she checks him out of the way to get to the sink and grab a glass. “Either go and say something, or go somewhere else,” Nile hisses over her shoulder as she fills the glass. “But stop hovering in the doorway like a creep.”

Booker shifts back a little further, out of sight of the entrance hallway. “Suit yourself,” Nile says with a shrug.

When she gets back out, Andy is there, talking quietly with Joe. “Here,” Nile says, flashing back to all those ill-advised nights out what feels like a lifetime ago when she hands Nicky the glass of water and he almost immediately spills half of it. “Okay, let’s just-” She steadies the glass in his hands until she is fairly sure he isn’t about to drop it. “Drink all that. You’ll thank me in the morning.”

Andy and her watch from the bottom of the stairs as Nicky staggers up, one hand braced against the wall and the other firmly wrapped around Joe’s shoulders. “He’s absolutely smashed,” Nile mutters. “That’s not good.”

Andy shrugs. “He’ll have one hell of a hangover tomorrow, but Joe said they’ve talked it out a bit, so it might actually have helped.” She runs her hands through her hair with a sigh, pushing it back out of her face. “Don’t keep any guns under your pillow for the next few nights, maybe. Nicky tends to wake silently from nightmares, but if Joe has managed to get through to him about the whole silent penance thing, he might not.”

“Silent…penance?” Nile asks.

Andy sighs again. “Nicky has a long and complicated history with Catholicism,” she says. “Of course he does. The Crusades were…a lot of things, and what happened in Jerusalem weighed heavily on him for a long time. But some things are deeply ingrained.” She glances over at Nile. “Ask them to tell you about it properly, some time. Maybe not right now, but in a few weeks or so. It’s one hell of a story.”

Nile can only imagine.

“Give him time,” Andy says quietly, almost to herself. “We’re safe here. We all have time.”

0-o-0-o-0

Nicky wakes up in the morning, and immediately wishes that he hadn’t.

He feels sick all over, his head swimming. There’s a horrible taste in his mouth, and when he squints his eyes open even the dim light through the drawn curtains is enough to make him groan, and squeeze his eyes shut again.

There is a rustle behind him, and the solid warmth of Joe moves away from him slightly. “Nicolo?” he asks softly.

Nicky shakes his head, and immediately regrets it. “’m not here,” he mutters. “Come back later.”

The concern leaves Joe’s voice, replaced with thinly veiled amusement. “Oh, my Nicolo,” he says. “How’s the head?”

“Currently wishing it could not be attached to this body,” Nicky mutters into his pillow. “What happened?”

Joe pauses, seemingly lost for words, and then last night floods back. Nicky stills. “Oh.”

“I still don’t care,” Joe says quietly, his hand smoothing down Nicky’s side in slow strokes. “Not one bit. And I will do whatever it takes to convince you that I hold no blame or anger for you not spending every moment fighting those who took you. That it is nothing to be ashamed of, to have felt so tired. To have stopped, for a little while.”

Nicky hums. “It’s going to get worse before it gets better, isn’t it?” he asks.

Joe’s hand pauses in its movement. “Probably,” he says. “But a few sleepless nights are nothing to me, if you are here. We are safe here. We have time, together, here.” There’s a rustle, the mattress dipping beneath him, and then Nicky feels a kiss pressed to his temple. “If I made toast, do you think you can eat it?”

Nicky grimaces, and very carefully shakes his head. “Water, please.”

“Of course, my love.” Joe gets up, careful not to jostle Nicky too much as he clambers over him out of the bed and smooths the covers back down over Nicky, and Nicky is briefly overwhelmed with love for the man at his side. He smiles up at him as best as he can, with his face still half-buried in the pillow.

“Love you,” he murmurs.

Joe smiles, that real smile that forms crinkles at the corners of his eyes, and crouches down to press another kiss to his temple. “Love you too,” he replies. “I’ll be back soon.”

Nicky lets his eyes slip shut, and doesn’t watch as Joe leaves the room. He hears his footsteps as he hurries downstairs, and then the low murmur of voices. He can hear Andy, and then Nile. They sound concerned. He opens his eyes, and immediately realises his mistake when the room swims around him, empty of anyone else.

Shame rolls low through his stomach, crawling underneath his skin. He squeezes his eyes shut, pressing his face into the pillow until he can feel the creases of the fabric digging into the skin of his cheek.

Joe doesn’t care, he reminds himself. Joe doesn’t care that he gave up and gave in, was too tired to fight against them anymore when the days blurred together into one grey smear of agony. That’s what matters, that’s who’s opinion has always mattered ever since they stopped killing each other and learned to love someone they had always seen as enemy. And Joe wouldn’t lie to him. He would never lie to him, not about something like this.

Nicky keeps his eyes shut, and recites psalms under his breath until he hears the tell-tale creak of the stairs. He opens his eyes to see Joe leaning against the doorway. There’s a bottle of water in one hand, a book in the other. One of his pockets crinkles suspiciously, and Nicky narrows his eyes.

“You surely wouldn’t be so cruel to indulge your occasional sweet tooth when even the thought of sugar makes me feel sick?” he asks. He knows the joke doesn’t quite land right, falls flat somewhere between the rasp in his throat and the hollowness in his frame he knows Joe still notices, but Joe just smiles and reaches into his pocket.

“I would not torment you so,” he says, playing along. He pulls a packet of what looks like biscuits out of his pocket. “Nile found these in the local shop. Apparently they are in the States as well, and were her go-to hangover food after ill-advised nights out. She bought them for you.”

“Oh.” Nicky snakes one hand out from under the covers, reaching out for him. “Water first, maybe.”

Joe laughs, and crosses the small distance between them easily, dropping down to a crouch to put himself on Nicky’s level without a thought. “If you sit up to drink, are you going to throw up?” he asks.

Nicky grimaces, scrunching his nose in that way that he knows Joe finds endearing. “I’ve done enough of that these past days, I think.” It’s a bit of a trial, but he’s able to prop himself up enough to drain most of the bottle of water, even if the room does swim around him. Joe sits down on the bed next to him as Nicky sinks back into his pillow, and waves a single cracker in front of his face.

Nicky reluctantly takes it. It’s not actually that bad.

“I am never doing this again,” he mutters, summoning up enough energy to roll over and sling one arm over Joe where he is sat, propped up against the headboard with a book in his lap. “This is awful. I feel terrible.”

He feels a hand card through his hair as he presses his face into Joe’s hip. “It is truly unfair that we cannot die, but we still get hangovers,” he remarks. “At least they pass quickly.”

There’s a note in his voice that makes Nicky pause. It’s the one that appears when Joe is thinking hard about something, turning it over and over in his mind to try and make it fall into place. He doesn’t say anything, just shuts his eyes and waits.

Joe’s fingers run through his hair a few more times, before they still. “It seems that Booker followed through on his threat,” he says quietly. “There is a stack of empty bottles beside the sink. When I went down, he was pouring out his hip flask.”

Nicky can hear the wheels turning in Joe’s head. Actions have always spoken louder than words to him. “What are you thinking of that?” he asks, not bothering to open his eyes or look up towards Joe’s face. He doesn’t need to.

Joe lets out a breath. “I don’t know,” he mutters. “I don’t want to just forgive and forget and move on. Not when he is the reason…not when you’re here, like this. But he…he does regret it, doesn’t he? And he’s…he was right. Maybe we could have asked.”

Nicky nods, though the motion sets his head spinning again. “You don’t have to forgive him, love,” he murmurs into Joe’s hip. “Not if you don’t want to.”

“Oh, I know,” Joe replies. “But still.”

“He is family,” Nicky finishes for him. He shifts slightly, opening his eyes just enough to sneak another cracker out of the packet by Joe’s side. “If there are crumbs in the bed tonight, then it is your fault.”

“Of course it is,” Joe replies evenly. He runs his hand through Nicky’s hair one more time, and then there’s a rustle as he picks up his book. “The new translation of The Odyssey that I haven’t read yet,” he says in answer to Nicky’s unspoken question. “By Emily Wilson. It’s been sat in my bag for months. Apparently caused quite the controversy amongst some of the older academics with the exposure of the masculine lens of centuries of translation, so it should be a good read.”

Nicky hums in agreement and settles more firmly against Joe’s side. “Iambic pentameter,” Joe muses as he turns the first page. “That really needs to be read out loud for the full grasp of it.”

Nicky knows what Joe is doing. He also is aware that Joe knows that he knows, but that thought makes his headache return with a vicious vengeance. He slowly munches on another cracker and shuts his eyes again as Joe settles back against the headboard and starts to read.

 _“Tell me about a complicated man.  
Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost  
when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,  
and where he went, and who he met, the pain  
he suffered in the storms at sea, and how  
he worked to save his life and bring his men  
back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools,  
they ate the Sun God’s cattle, and the god  
kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus,  
tell the old story for our modern times.  
Find the beginning._”

0-o-0-o-0

It gets a little worse, and then it gets better.

Nile’s phone stays almost permanently on charge for two days straight, connected to the speaker that she gives Joe to put in their room. Joe thinks that by now he could reel off the entire playlist that they keep cycling through, but the bright music helps remind Nicky where he is every time he wakes up. It doesn’t stop the nightmares, and it doesn’t stop Nicky waking up with strangled cries in his throat in the middle of the night, but it helps.

Joe is just thankful that at least Nicky isn’t waking up and slipping out of bed to silently get drunk, or else staying quiet in some form of penance that he believes he deserves.

He barely sees the others for nearly two days, only leaving Nicky’s side to get more food, try and fill out the sunken hollows that have settled into him. His cheekbones are sharp enough to cut glass, but Joe can’t bring himself to find much beauty in it. Not when he knows why.

Even those brief few minutes without Nicky in his line of sight sets Joe’s heart beating faster, worry skittering under his skin. Nile seems to notice his worry whenever she sees him appear, and takes it upon herself to go upstairs and sit outside of their bedroom whenever she sees Joe.

“You don’t have to do that,” Joe says at one point when he comes back upstairs, more food and a few bottles of water balanced carefully in his hands. “He’s still sleeping a lot right now.” He doesn’t know how many times Nicky has died over the past months, he thinks Nicky probably doesn’t even know, but each death and return saps energy from them. Nicky is still trying to catch up.

Nile shrugs, scrolling through something on her phone. “Yeah, Andy explained the energy loss that comes with us dying a bunch of times close together.” She glances up. “Is that one of the reasons why he’s so skinny right now?”

Joe leans against the wall, and then lets himself slump down to the ground in a controlled slide. “Yeah,” he says quietly, setting the things in his arms down at his side. “Partially, at least. I think they probably did starve him as well. Whether it was as some sort of…experiment, or whether it was another way to make him easier to control, I’m not sure. Probably some of both.”

Nile’s face scrunches. “Fucking hell, that’s depressing.” She picks up some of the food that Joe has set down, peeling back one corner of the sandwich to see what’s inside it. “Well, this looks like more meat and cheese than bread, so I think it’s safe to say he’s going to be fine.”

Joe snorts. “Nicky has significant opinions on sandwiches. I’m doing the best that I can with the materials available. And I don’t exactly have the time to try and make ciabatta.” He leans his head back against the wall. “That is more Nicky’s area of expertise anyway.”

Nile hums. “Maybe I’ll ask him to teach me. I’m an okay cook, I had to learn to be, but I’m a rubbish baker. Absolutely terrible. I once tried to make a loaf of bread and the entire thing collapsed in the middle.” She laughs at the memory, tipping her head back to rest against the wall next to Joe. “We fed it to the dog, which was also a mistake.”

“Bread is a fickle mistress and demands respect,” Joe remarks. “It can sense your fear.”

Nile snorts at that. “Great. Just what I need. At least it can’t shoot me.”

“Yeah, but we can still get food poisoning.” Joe tilts his head to look over at her, this kid who seems so young to him and yet is so alive, so much more alive than anyone he has known for so long. He has seen centuries beside Nicky, beside Andy, even beside Booker, the damn bastard that he is. It has only been months next to Nile, most of them spent frantically searching and half out of his mind with fear and worry, and yet she has carved out her own little space in their strange family and fitted into it so well.

“Immortality suits you, Nile,” he says quietly. “It really does.”

Nile ducks her head. “I’m getting used to it, I think. It’s honestly not that different?”

Joe gives her an incredulous look. “Were you often jumping out of skyscrapers before we met?”

“Yeah, well if you ignore that part of the job, it’s not much different.” Nile spins her phone between her fingers. “We still get tired, and hungry. We still hurt, we can still be drugged or get sick. We’re still…human. We’re just human for a lot longer, I guess.” She hums. “Pretty shit deal, if you think about it. If we were going to be immortal, we could at least be properly immortal. It would be cool if we had actual superpowers.”

“What superpower would you have?” Joe asks. “If you could pick any.”

Nile thinks about it for a long moment. “Telekinesis,” she says eventually. “Moving things with your mind. Because then technically you could have any superpower you wanted. Want to fly? Just pick yourself up with your mind. Want to blast fire from your hands? Concentrate oxygen from the air out from your hands, find some sort of way to make a spark and hey presto, homemade flamethrower.”

Joe snorts. “That I would love to see.”

“You?” Nile asks.

Joe considers it. There are many things he could say. The power to always know where the rest of his family is, or the power to take pain away from people and give them peace. The power to choose when he and Nicky’s blessing runs out, and that they find out in the most innocuous ways. That he stubs his toe one day and it stays purple, or Nicky cuts himself shaving and it bleeds for minutes before stopping, and they get to live out a normal life together for the rest of the time that they are given.

“I would like to be able to speak with animals,” he says, instead of all of that. “I want to know what horses are really thinking.”

Nile laughs, tipping her head back as her chest shakes, and Joe couldn’t contain his answering smile even if he wants to.

Slowly, things start getting better.

Nicky spends more and more time awake, and begins to let down a little the barriers that he must have so carefully constructed over the months that Joe was parted from him. Joe’s heartbeat still picks up every time Nicky is out of his sight, but the rest of their family is around them. If any outside force was to try anything, it would be a supremely bad time to pick. Andy alone seems to barely sleep, and Joe hears her regularly patrolling around the house at night.

He wakes up one morning to an empty side of the bed and voices coming up through the floorboards. There is a note resting on the pillow next to his own head, and Joe instantly recognises Andy’s handwriting.

_Nicky is downstairs, with us. He said to let you sleep in._

Now that he’s listening, Joe can hear music playing downstairs. He can hear laughter over it, and he has to take a moment to breathe through the sudden ache in his chest when he recognises Nicky’s laugh, the way his voice curls with amusement. There’s the clatter of metal, what sounds like baking pans, and then the smell of fresh bread slowly rises up to him.

Joe slips out of bed, shrugging on a jumper that he only picked because it was the nearest he could grab and not because Nicky slept in it last night and it smells of him, and staggers out the bedroom door. He makes it down to the bottom step of the stairs to see Nicky, swaying slightly to the music playing from Nile’s speakers on the table as he pulls a baking sheet out of the oven and sets it down on top of the stove. Joe can see the distinctive shape of ciabatta as Nicky gingerly picks one up, flipping it over and tapping at the bottom with a thoughtful frown.

Nile literally shimmies over to where Nicky is, taking the loaves from him and putting them onto a wire rack. She is singing along to the song playing, something Joe vaguely recognises as having been everywhere on the radio a few years ago. As Joe watches, she takes Nicky’s hands in hers, oven gloves and everything, and starts trying to lead him through some dance steps. Nicky is laughing, grinning wide as Nile tries to spin him and he can’t quite make it under her arm.

There’s the sound of footsteps, and then Andy appears from the living room. She glances into the kitchen, and a smile curls her lips, but she doesn’t go in. Instead, she sits down next to Joe on the bottom step of the stairs as he shuffles over to make space for her.

“You okay?” she asks after a long moment.

Joe can’t take his eyes off Nicky. “Me?” he asks. “I’m fine.”

Andy leans into his side slightly. “You’re crying.”

“I am?” Joe wipes at his face, feeling the trails of tear tracks down his cheeks. “Oh. I am. Huh.” He wipes at his cheeks again. “I’m fine.”

“I’m sure,” Andy replies. She follows his gaze to the kitchen, watches Nicky and Nile dance in front of the stove with the smell of freshly-baked bread drifting from ciabatta loaves now cooling on the counter. “And it’s nothing to do with your husband right there.”

Joe breathes out, and doesn’t acknowledge the tears that slip down his cheeks. “He’s _right there_ , Andy,” he gets out. “He- it was seven months, Andy, seven months apart from him, and now I have him back with me again. I don’t- I just…”

He feels Andy’s hand grip his shoulder. “Take your time,” she says quietly. “You have it.”

Joe clears his throat. “I can never forget the blessing that I have been given,” he says quietly. “For so long I was- all I wanted was to have him back with me. For him to be okay. That was my only goal. And now? Everything is just-” He scrubs at his face with his hands. “I don’t know what to do now,” he admits. “All that has sustained me for all these months is…is _this_.” He waves his hand at Nicky, laughing with Nile in the kitchen. “Somehow getting back to this. To him. And now I’m here.”

Andy gives him a little shake. “So what?” she asks. “You’ve gotten what you wanted, what we all wanted. Enjoy it. Help him get better, put the weight and muscle back on- I know that’s making you worry, you idiot. Be his husband.”

Joe sniffs. “It has been a while since we’ve had a wedding. And never with Nile.” He glances over at Andy, just for a moment. “Have they legalised same-sex marriage here yet?”

“You hopeless romantic,” Andy replies with a smile. She nods. “They did. A few years ago now.”

Joe hums. “I think I should get a ring, this time,” he says. “It’s been a while since we’ve done it properly.”

“Dibs on being your best man,” Andy says immediately. “Nile can be Nicky’s.” She pauses. “Booker can be flower girl, I guess. Or officiate.”

Joe glances at the door through to the living room. He can just see Booker, reading a book quietly in an armchair. He has stayed out of Joe’s way the past few days, the two of them barely crossing paths in the old farmhouse Joe is slowly remembering as a home.

“I have tried,” he says quietly, “to imagine what it would be like if I did not have Nicky. What would have happened if we had stormed that place to find him already dead. I cannot. I am able to admit that it would break me entirely, I believe.” His voice shakes, entirely without his permission, and he takes a breath to steady himself. “Booker asked me to imagine the pit that would exist without Nicky. I can see the bare edges of it, I think, and it terrifies me. I would do anything to not stand there. And if I did, with no way of going back?” He shakes his head. “I do not think anything would be out of the question.”

Andy is silent for a long moment. “I’m sorry,” she says eventually.

Joe stares through the open kitchen door at Nicky laughing as Nile tries to teach him a dance move, swatting at him with a tea towel every time he apparently gets something wrong. He wishes he could frame this moment, capture it somehow and relive it in all the times that he so desperately needs it.

“What for?” he asks, not looking away from Nicky.

“I failed you,” Andy says. She leans forwards, resting her elbows on her knees with her hands clasped in front of her. “All of you. I knew something was wrong with Booker, of course I did. But I did nothing.”

“You couldn’t have known he would betray us,” Joe says. “None of us could have known that.”

“I should have intervened,” Andy says down to her hands. “I should have done something, but…” She sighs. “I was tired, Joe. I was so tired. But I lead this team, and I know that’s no excuse.” She reaches out and takes one of Joe’s hands. “You and Nicky have paid the price for my mistakes. It should never have been that way round.”

Joe squeezes her hand. He has nothing to say in return to that. Andy leans into him and rests her head on his shoulder. “Tell me we’re all going to be okay,” she murmurs.

Nicky is trying to teach Nile steps for one of the court dances they learned through Renaissance Italy. By the looks of it, and Nile’s hopeless laughter as Nicky spins and lifts her, nearly smacking her head into the overhead light, he’s trying to teach her the volta. Nile has her head tipped back in peals of laughter as Nicky gives in and just spins her in the lift until he’s stumbling from the dizziness, laughing helplessly.

Joe squeezes Andy’s hand. “We’re going to be okay, boss,” he says. “We’re going to be just fine.”

0-o-0-o-0

He hears footsteps on the stairs, coming down. Joe wraps his hands around his mug, and tries to make it look like he isn’t lying in wait.

Booker stops in the doorway to the kitchen, one hand still on the doorframe. His eyes dart around the room, and then back out into the hallway and the living room opposite. “Where’s Nicky?” he asks. There might be a note of worry in his voice, but Joe can’t quite tell.

Joe presses his hands into the sides of his mug, letting the warmth of his tea seep into his skin. “Nile was complaining that I was monopolising him, so she has dragged him out for a run,” he says. “They should be back soon.”

Booker nods. “Andy?” he asks. He doesn’t move from the doorway, still clutching onto the doorframe.

“Out looking at hunt horses for next week,” Joe replies. “She wants something mad enough to take her over the really big hedges, so she’s…test riding a few, I suppose.”

Booker nods. “Right. Okay. I’ll just go out and get some food, then.”

Joe pushes the kitchen chair opposite him out with one foot. “It can wait,” he says easily. “Take a seat.”

Booker pauses. “If this is going to be an interrogation…”

Joe snorts. “I think I’ve done enough of those, these past few months. No, I just wanted to ask you something.”

Booker hesitantly sits down in the chair. Joe sees the way his hand twitches towards the pocket where his hip flask always is, before setting his hands back down flat on the table. “Ask away,” he says. He eyes the mug like he thinks Joe might toss the contents in his face, and Joe takes a sip of his tea.

“I would offer you a drink,” he says, “but you tipped all of the alcohol down the sink.”

“There is a crate of wine hidden under Nile’s bed,” Booker confesses. “Andy said it was too good a vintage to get rid of.”

Despite himself, Joe finds himself snorting a laugh. “I don’t even remember what vintage they are. I think the crate was a gift from the local hunt master the last time we were here.”

“Oh, when we pulled that horse out of the bog?” Booker grimaces at the memory, and Joe instinctively winces in sympathy. By the time they’d gotten the horse out, all of them were exhausted and covered in freezing cold mud. Andy had lost one of her shoes in the struggle, and Nicky had given her a piggyback all the way back across the fields as Joe and Booker had hung onto the horse to try and stop it bolting off into another bog.

“What did you want to ask?” Booker asks, jolting Joe out of the memory of being dragged through the mud by a very confused and muddy horse.

Joe hums, sipping at his tea. Now that Booker is sitting across from him, tracing the grain of the wood with one fingertip even as he doesn’t look away from meeting Joe’s gaze, the words dry up on his tongue.

After a few moments, Booker nods. “I figured this was coming,” he says. He drums his fingers on the table, glancing away at the door. “Let me stick around long enough to see Andy again before I leave, will you?”

Joe blinks. If the words had dried up on his tongue before, they are gone now. He just stares across the table at Booker.

Booker’s mouth twists in a grimace. “Yeah, I thought so.” He pushes himself to his feet. “I’ll pack my stuff.”

Joe watches as he gets to his feet, his movements heavy. Booker pauses for a moment, seemingly waiting for him to say something else, and then turns for the door.

“Would you have done it?”

Booker comes to a halt in the doorway. He turns back towards Joe. His knuckles are white where he grips the doorframe. “What do you mean?” he asks, his voice hoarse.

“Would you have done it?” Joe repeats. He clears his throat. “If…if they had found a way. Would you have followed through?”

Something in Booker crumples. His grip on the doorframe seems to be the only thing holding him up, slumping against the wood. “I- I don’t know,” he whispers. He stares at Joe, not looking away from him. “I don’t know, Joe.” He runs one hand over his face, pressing hard down on his jaw. “I think…before all of this, before you and Nicky paid the price for my fucking idiocy when it should have been me, it should have been _me…_ ”

He breaks off, gasping in a breath, never looking away from Joe even as Joe sees a tear roll down his cheek. “It should have been me,” he gets out again, his voice hoarse. “I- I can’t go back and change it, Joe, but _god_ , it should have been me. It should never have been you and Nicky.”

“Before,” Joe says quietly. “If you could have- if you had been given a way out…”

Booker squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, shaking his head. “If I had been given the chance to take this curse away, I would have taken it. And I think I might have walked myself off the nearest bridge as soon as I knew it would take.”

Joe flinches. “And now?” he asks, desperately trying to keep his voice steady.

Booker draws a ragged breath. “I don’t know. I- I just don’t know.” He shrugs, the gesture falling flat. “Sometimes I just want it to stop, Joe. I just…I want it all to stop. But there was no way- I couldn’t refuse Nile, when she found me. Not when Nicky was paying a price that should be mine. Not when I knew even without seeing you how much this was tearing you apart.” He stops, and breathes for a few moments. His hand trembles where it’s grasping the doorframe.

“You see this as a curse?” Joe asks, the words falling from lips before he can stop them. He sees Booker flinch slightly. “That was a stupid question.”

“I know it is a blessing to you and Nicky,” Booker says quietly. His lips crook in a wry smile. “I know that it is a miracle for you, even if I don’t believe in miracles.”

He straightens up slightly from his slump against the wall, looking at Joe with an utter certainty born from two centuries of war and battles and the endless drag of unending days after days. “We never got a choice in this. None of us. And I don’t want this. I don’t think I ever have. But…fuck, Joe, you and Nicky… you two were made for this life. You get centuries with him. You have _time_. And I…I’ll always be a little jealous of that, and I will always hate what I have lost. Sometimes to the point that I can barely move with it. But…” He sighs, and meets Joe’s gaze head on. “If someone gets to be happy in amongst all of this, Joe, it should be the two of you.”

Joe draws a shaky breath. “Are you going to keep looking?” he asks, his voice barely more than a whisper.

Booker shakes his head, and Joe nods. “Are you going to stay, then?” he asks next. “Here, with us.”

That makes Booker pause. “I- I wasn’t sure if I could,” he admits. “If I can…maybe for a little while. Until Nicky is back on his feet, and we know you’re safe. But there’s a whole world out there I haven’t really seen. Maybe I should go looking.”

“For what?”

Booker shrugs. “I guess I’ll know it when I find it.”

There’s the sound of the front door opening, and then Joe hears Nicky and Nile’s voice spill into the house. Nicky is laughing again, and for just a moment Joe sees out of the corner of his eye Booker watch his face, and a small smile curls his lips.

“Hey,” Nile says as she comes into the kitchen, heading straight for the sink. She’s still breathing hard, sweat dripping down her forehead. She picks up on the atmosphere in the room a beat too late, glancing back between Booker and Joe. “Everything good?”

“Everything is fine, Nile,” Joe says, just as Nicky comes into the room.

“Hi,” he says breathlessly to Joe. His cheeks are flushed, his thin t-shirt clinging to his body with every breath he takes. He pushes his damp hair back from his face with one hand, the sheen of sweat across his face catching the light as he moves. He smiles at Joe, his eyes bright, and Joe can’t possibly take his eyes off of him.

“Good run?” he gets out, his voice strangled.

Nicky stretches his arms up above his head, his shirt riding up slightly. “It was good,” he replies, still a little breathless. “Nile is fast. I’ll have to trip her up a few times next time if I want to keep pace.”

Joe can see Nile out of the corner of his eye, flipping Nicky off as she downs a glass of water. In the corner of the room, backed out of the way, Booker chuckles quietly. Nicky glances towards him, and the smile on his face dims slightly but doesn’t disappear. He looks back at Joe, giving him a questioning look. Joe nods, still unable to tear his eyes away.

“Nile, we should go,” Booker says from his corner of the room. “Come on.”

“What?” Nile says over her shoulder. “No, I really want a shower. And some food. I’m starving.” She heads for the fridge. “Anyone up for pancakes?”

Nicky is silent now, staring back at Joe, his chest still rising and falling and his shirt clinging to it with every breath. There’s a hunger in his eyes that Joe hasn’t seen for months, one that’s stirring something low in his stomach. “Nile,” Booker says, a hint of urgency entering his voice. “I’ll buy you breakfast, I’ll buy you whatever you want. Grab a coat and let’s go.”

“Seriously, Booker, it’s fine.” Joe sees Nile turn around out of the corner of his eye, and her eyes dart back and forth between him and Nicky. “Oh. _Oh_. Yeah, let’s go. Let’s go right now.”

She grabs Booker’s offered arm and Booker tugs her out of the room. “We’ll give you two- three hours,” Booker says over his shoulder as they head for the front door. “You can have the house to yourself. Andy won’t be back until this evening anyway.”

“Booker?” Nicky calls over his shoulder. Booker stops abruptly, surprise etching his face as he turns back towards him. There’s the barest of smiles curling the corner of Nicky’s lips as he looks over at him. “Thank you,” he says quietly.

Booker visibly flinches at the words. “Just…just remember we are also living here,” he says pleadingly. “And we all eat at that table.”

Nicky laughs, and then looks surprised that he has. Joe pushes to his feet and rounds the table towards Nicky as he hears the front door open and shut behind Nile and Booker. Nicky turns back to him, and then reaches out and tugs him closer with a hand in his shirt. Joe stares at his face, his flushed cheeks and bright eyes as Nicky smiles helplessly at him.

“What are you looking at?” Nicky asks.

“The miracle that I have been given,” Joe replies. He reaches up and cups Nicky’s cheek with one hand. His skin is flushed and warm beneath his palm, and so, so alive. “You’re here.”

“I have been for a thousand years,” Nicky replies. His eyes dart down to Joe’s lips, and then back up to meet Joe’s gaze.

Joe laughs. He feels so full, too much to comprehend filling him up as he stands there and soaks in the brightness that is Nicky, right there in front of him. He laughs, and he sees the answering joy in Nicky’s eyes. “And you say I am the romantic,” he says, and he knows that Nicky can hear every note of the love that is overflowing him in his words.

Nicky kisses him. Joe wraps his arms around his neck, revelling in the warmth and the presence that he will never be able to forget, and kisses him back.

0-o-0-o-0

Nile pushes through the front door. “You,” she says pointedly as she stalks into the living room, “are all fucking insane.”

Three sets of eyes look up at her from around the room. Nicky is stretched out on the sofa, head in Joe’s lap as he reads and Joe sketches idly. Booker is in the armchair near the fire, needle and thread in hand as he repairs what looks like the zip on a jacket. He sets it down as he sees her, and Nicky sits up.

He stifles a laugh as soon as he sees her. “You fell off again, I take it,” he says.

Nile looks down at herself. At the mud covering her clothes, the sand in every crevice of her skin. “You think?” she asks.

Andy appears behind her, riding hat hanging from one arm and a wide grin on her face. She wipes her hands off on her jodhpurs. “She’s getting better,” she says. “Though I wouldn’t take her out to jump hedges anytime soon, if only to make sure we don’t blow our cover when everyone sees her die and come straight back to life.”

“I’m getting pissed off, is what I’m getting,” Nile replies, though she is struggling to suppress a grin. “How many times do I have to fall off the horse before I can actually manage to ride it?”

Joe laughs. “There is probably some inspirational saying about that, pinned up on a wall somewhere,” he says. One hand cards through Nicky’s hair absent-mindedly, and Nicky leans into the touch. “You’ll get it,” he tells Nile. “Once you get the balance down, the rest of it comes easy.”

“Other than having to control a thousand pound animal, sure.” Nile wipes at her face again, only smearing the mud around more. “Is there anything on tv?”

The remote is closest to Booker. He flicks through a few channels, before coming to a stop on a football game. “Soccer?” Nile asks.

Everyone apart from Andy turns and glares at her, though it’s mostly half-hearted. “Football,” Nicky corrects. He heaves a sigh when neither Booker nor Joe make any effort to change the channel. “I suppose I shall be banished to the kitchen, then?”

Andy snorts behind her at that, and even Booker has a grin on his face. Nile glances between them and tries not to focus on how Nicky is actually pouting as he looks at Joe. “What am I missing?” she asks.

“My Nicolo is a kind and compassionate man,” Joe says, a glint in his eye. “Unfortunately, he is also competitive. And Italian.”

Nicky glares at him. “It was one time,” he says. “And it was extenuating circumstances.”

“Sure,” Booker mutters. “There’s a random Frenchman with a crooked nose somewhere who might disagree with you.”

“What happened?” Nile asks. “Nicky, did you break someone’s nose over _football_?”

“It was an accident!” Nicky protests, even as Joe starts laughing.

“We were in Paris, stopping over on the way somewhere else,” Andy says as Nicky shoves at Joe for laughing at him. “And we decided to get a drink in a bar. We didn’t actually realise it was the World Cup final until we had already gotten drinks, and we definitely didn’t realise it was France playing Italy.” She sighs. “An Italian in a Parisian bar during a French final is already bad enough, and then Zidane had to go and headbutt an Italian player.”

“Completely out of nowhere,” Nicky adds.

“Materazzi had asked for it,” Booker says from his chair.

Nile can see the moment that Nicky decides to not throw the book in his hands at Booker’s head. “He did not,” he protests.

“Okay, enough,” Andy interrupts. “We don’t need to re-enact the bar brawl in here, thank you.”

“There was a brawl?” Nile asks. “Over _football_?” She pauses. “Actually, I don’t know why I’m surprised. Of course there was, if you were all there.”

Joe snorts. “We didn’t actually start it, but Nicky was determined to finish it, lest he bring shame to his country. And Booker is French, and we were in Paris, so of course he had to get involved. Andy dragged us all out of there by our ears, and ever since then, Nicky has been banned from getting too involved in football.”

“There was that broken tv as well,” Booker adds.

“Oh yes, I’d forgotten about that,” Joe says with a laugh. “But I think we can make an exception today, as long as neither France or Italy are playing, and we keep all sharp or heavy objects out of Nicky’s reach.” He laughs again at Nicky’s betrayed expression, and leans forwards to press a quick kiss to his lips. “You may throw all the pillows you like at the screen, if you desire.”

“That’ll have to do,” Nicky mutters.

“Nicky absolutely knew it was the World Cup final,” Andy whispers to her as they head upstairs to get changed, and for Nile to wash all the mud off of her. “And he knew Italy was playing. It was him who suggested going out to a bar in the first place. He does actually get that worked up by the football sometimes, get Joe to tell you the story of the tv when we go back down, but that one was definitely planned. Joe still hasn’t put it together.”

“He doesn’t strike me as the type to provoke a bar brawl,” Nile admits. “Why then?”

“It had been a rough mission,” Andy says. “Booker in particular had seemed really down.” She shrugs. “I think Nicky just wanted to cheer him up.”

When Nile has finally scrubbed all the mud off her body and warmed up, she heads downstairs to find Andy carefully balancing five mugs of tea as she heads into the living room. Nile darts forwards and takes a few from her, following her through to where she can already hear the dull roar of a crowd from the tv. Booker has dragged the armchair round next to the sofa so he can see the screen, and has set the sewing aside. Nicky is very pointedly reading his book, but he shifts his legs so that Nile can sit down as she passes a mug to him.

Andy sits on the rug, back up against the sofa next to Joe’s legs as he takes a mug from her and passes it over to Booker. Booker murmurs a thanks, eyes glued to the screen. “Who’s winning?” Nile asks as she sips at her tea and Nicky settles his legs back in her lap.

“Real Madrid is losing,” both Joe and Booker say at the same time. There’s a pause, and they glance at each other. A small smile curls Joe’s lips. “And that’s all that matters,” he finishes. His hand rests on Nicky’s chest, and Nicky puts his book down long enough to take it and press a kiss to his knuckles.

Booker starts yelling at the tv as something goes wrong in the game, though Nile can’t tell what actually happened. Andy reaches up and covers Nicky’s eyes when he tries to turn and see what happened, and Nicky laughs even as he lets her. Joe flips over to a new page on his sketchbook, balancing it on one knee as the pencil scratches across the paper. His other hand is still resting on Nicky’s chest, rising and falling slowly with each breath.

It’s not yet forgiveness. And it’s not quite salvation. But it’s a start.

_finis_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Told you it would get better! After that old writer's trick of getting your characters drunk or tired enough to have an emotionally honest conversation, of course.
> 
> I'm trying not to subscribe to too many European stereotypes when writing tog fic, but that scene in tog where Joe and Booker are watching the footie and Nicky is reading Very Intently in the other room does lend itself to the idea that Nicky gets way too invested in the football, and then I remembered the whole controversy of the 2006 world cup final, so I ran with it.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, the response to all my tog fics so far has been incredible and I'm so grateful. As always, kudos and comments are much loved and I would love to discuss any aspect of the fic in the comments if you are curious about what goes on behind the scenes. Thank you so much for reading, I really can't say it enough.


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